1st Thomas Reinke displayed the full breadth and depth of his Scrabble expertdom with a pristine 5-0 +901 record and a fearsome average of 524 points per game. He got off to a strong start by scoring over 500 points in both games of a 2-on-1 match: 506-334 against Peter Schmiedicke and 535-320 against Sara McLaughlin. His combined bingos in those games were QINTARS, VENTAILS, GORSIER, SAPONINE, and GILTHEAD. But the true scoring mastery was reserved for a later game against Charles Reinke, where Thomas scored a whopping 667 (to his brothers relatively minuscule 360) and played five bingos of HERITOR, UNADDED, MOPANES#, VICIATES#, and HEADNOTE. Charles, to his credit, played SMIDGEON for a decent score, but was otherwise relegated to "spectator mode" for much of the contest.

2nd Charles Reinke finished with a humdrum 3-2 -48 record, but with most players bunched up in the standings at two wins, that humdrum record was enough for second place. Like his brother, Charles found success in playing two games at once, scoring big wins against Peter Schmiedicke (434-312) and Dennis Lloyd (464-316) and managing to play a nine-letter word in both games (MISPARTED against Peter, TESTIFIED against Dennis). Unfortunately, the game against Dennis was marred by a phony WAMBLERS* - to WAMBLE means "to move unsteadily", but it doesn't take an R. In addition to the 300-point loss to his brother noted above, Charles also lost to Helen Flores by a score of 357-415, thanks to her bingos of MIGRANT and TONGUES.

3rd Helen Flores went 2-2 -6 and outperformed her season average by a significant amount, averaging 381 per game. She started strong with two straight wins, a 415-357 triumph over Charles Reinke and a 403-304 win over Sue Goldstein. In the latter game, Helen played a bingo if INCENSE while Sue got down SAILERS (after some internal debate on whether SAILERS could be a valid alternate spelling of SAILORS). Helen's luck didn't continue after that, as she lost encounter against Sara McLaughlin and Peter Schmiedicke, but she did play at least one bingo in each game, which is always a worthy milestone.

We welcomed new player JoAnn Savoy, and while she didn't win either of her two games, we hope she comes back regardless!