1st Bryan Benwitz extended his winning streak to 13 games with a spotless 4-0 +240 record. Each game of that personal-best winning streak has seen Bryan score above 400, meaning that the possible (probable?) key to ending Bryan's streak is to force him to score in the 300s. He kicked off his latest round of heinie-whuppings with a 444-343 win against Charles Reinke, finding GAROTTE, UNIFILAR, and word of the week SEEDCAKE in the winning effort. He got the Reinkes out of the way early by dispatching Thomas Reinke in round two, although the score was much closer at 426-422. Bryan got down the high-probability sevens of CORDAGE and LAAGERS, while Thomas responded with some high-probability bingos of his own, NEROLIS and TURNABLE. Bryan's bingo output was reduced in round three, but the winning continued without interruption, as he felled Helen Flores 413-340 with a sole bingo of AROUSER. The winning streak remained intact in the final round when he defeated the visiting one-man Iowa contigent, Mike Johnson, by a score of 455-393. His bingos there were PRANCED and QUAERES.

2nd Lynda Finn didn't quite make it to thirteen wins in a row, but her 3-1 +337 record saw her win her final three games of the night, so if we just give her a few more weeks, thirteen wins is completely doable. Losing to Sara McLaughlin 354-368 in the opening game was not an ideal start for Lynda, but the recovery began immediately when she played EGESTION and COALIEST to take a 436-368 win over Richard Lauder (who had TENORITE and the sounds-offensive-but-isn't FAGOTER). Lynda then scored a sizable win over Dave Kinzer, 421-327, with a single bing of SPOTTER. But Lynda's true nature as a dealer of Scrabble punishment was fully apparent in the final round when she trounced Helen Flores 443-254, playing bingos of ENSLAVED and NOVENAE in the process.

3rd Thomas Reinke went 3-2 +72, using the bonus fifth game to prevail over a knot of players stuck at 2-2 records. His first-round match against Richard Lauder resulted in a quite favorable outcome, 477-428, but that big margin was later undone by a devastating loss to Charles Reinke, 328-547. In that one, Charles played the nines of TELFERING and DOLLARISE# not just for style points, but actual Scrabble points as well. In between those games, Thomas grabbed a pair of wins off Mark Kenas, 436-370 and 467-431. Uncharacteristically for those high-powered Collins games, Thomas had only three bingos combined in the two wins: FURCATED, DISORDER, and OUTPAINT. Thomas' closely-fought 422-426 defeated at the unbeatable expertise of Bryan Benwitz was the other loss on his scorecard.