1st Bryan Benwitz re-established his supremacy with a pristine 4-0 record and a +474 spread total that put him way ahead of all competition. He started with a nice 493-378 win against Dave Kinzer in the first round, but his scores kept getting smaller as the session progressed, so there is hope that the trend will continue and that, in roughly one month, Bryan will be scoring in the low 200s and it will be possible to beat him. Until then, however, the writeups will be filled with descriptions of Bryan's victories. In round two, Bryan got down three bingos (STEADIER, TRINKETS, VISUALS) while dispatching Dennis Lloyd 481-326, then played another three bingos to vanquish Thomas Reinke, 472-338. Perfection was secured when Bryan, yet again, played three bingos (VENUSES, RUGOLAS, and TRAILING) in a 433-363 win over Richard Lauder. All told, Bryan's opponents played just one bingo against him (Dave's TILAPIA), so maybe next week we should all try extra hard to find bingos when playing against Bryan.

2nd Richard Lauder turned his 1-3 record from last week into a 3-1 +185 record this week, good for second place. He started off with a comfortable 415-308 win against Sara McLaughlin, where the only bingo on the board was the phony HANSELD*. HANSELED and HANDSEL are probably the words Richard was thinking of there. Richard then got a win against Jane Wesson, 384-342, with his bingo of AROINTS matching Jane's OUTLINE. A third and final win was scored against Dennis Lloyd, 473-367, where Richard's bingo of TEMERITY was initially misspelled (and challenged off) before being redeployed on the board for a nice score. A bingoless 363-433 loss to Bryan Benwitz sadly dashed Richard's hopes of attaining the elusive 4-0 record.

3rd Thomas Reinke finished at 3-1 +67 record. He pummeled Lynda Finn in the first game by a score of 456-273. Lynda did get one bingo of ALIENERS, but Thomas had three: OCREATE, PODIATRY, and BIOPLASM. He then took on Mark Kenas in a Collins-lexicon game, utilizing the CSW-only SEARATS# (in addition to WISTERIA and ORPINES) to take a 437-426 victory. A later rematch was even closer, with Thomas eking out a 445-438 win thanks to AIRBOUND and LAITIES (Mark got OUTGIVE and SPENDER). However, Thomas' zero bingos against Bryan Benwitz doomed him in their encounter, and he lost 338-472.