1st Thomas Reinke repeated last week's first place finish, again going 4-1 with a +237 spread. A typical Collins-fueled bingo bonanza occurred in round two as Thomas played seven bingos across two games: TORQUING, ENISLED, URBANISE, ATTICIZE, FERMENTS, BRAWNIER, and REMUAGES#. However, only one of those games was a win, a 495-387 victory over lifelong adversary Charles Reinke. The other was a 422-540 loss to Mark Kenas, who had three bingos of his own: TRINARY, OTARINE# (the highest-probability seven letter word in the Collins dictionary), and PLEXUSES for 119. Thomas got his revenge in a rematch against Mark, 504-477, again with both players getting three bingos, which will be listed here even though that amount of bingos is somewhat tedious to type out: DENTILS, RORTIEST#, and SUDARIA for Thomas; EDICTAL, GRANTED, and HIPBONES for Mark. A 527-316 win over Richard Lauder saw Thomas get down a 140-point 3x3 of RELAPSED, after which the rest of the game became a formality. Helen Flores was significantly closer to beating Thomas, losing 370-379. While it is always unethical to "accidentally" make a math error to give yourself ten extra points, in this case Helen would have been justified in attempting such a strategy.

2nd Bryan Benwitz didn't score below 400 in any of his games as he finished at 3-1 +445. Squaring off against John Bialek in round one, Bryan won handily, 484-297, assisted by a valid bingo of ESERINES and an invalid bingo of MUTATERS* (MUTATORS was the word he was going for). Similar success was found against Dennis Lloyd, although this time, both of Bryan's bingos were valid (TRIODES and YEANLING) in his 492-315 win. Another hefty, but not quite as hefty, victory was scored against Dave Kinzer, 437-335. Bryan celebrated Valentine's Day a couple months early with his single bingo of ROMANCE, while Dave got down SPOILING. Sitting at 3-0, Bryan seemed poised to put another 4-0 trophy on his trophy shelf (note: both the trophy and the trophy shelf are metaphorical), but it was not to be; Charles defeated him 427-406 thanks to finds of LINEAGES, RHEOSTAT, and the phony-but-plausible WOKENESS*. WOKER and WOKEST were recent additions to the dictionary, but apparently not WOKENESS.

3rd Dennis Lloyd recovered from his "perfect" 0-5 record last week to go 3-1 +175 this week. It was quickly apparent that his fortunes had changed on this night, as his first game was a 531-338 beatdown administered to Beth Amos, good for Dennis' second-highest scoring game this year. His bingos were HOVERED, SEXTANT, GINGERS, and BETRAYED, and that bingo total of four matches a personal best for Dennis at our club. As punishment for his success against Beth, Dennis lost to Bryan Benwitz 315-492 in the next round, but he got back on track quickly with a win over Wendy Bialek, 428-306. Wendy got down STONERS, while Dennis played ATOMISED and the phony OUTLEAN*, a word which brings to mind another phony that has been attempted out of that set of letters, TOLUANE* (please don't commit that one to memory). Dennis finished up his third-place effort with a bingoless 352-315 win against Richard Lauder.

Mark's nine-letter CANONICAL was word of the week. A valuable learning experience was had by all when an S was hooked on it and a challenge was unsuccessful. CANONICALS is a noun meaning "the official dress of the clergy".