1st Andy Bohnsack was the undisputed weekly champion with a 4-0 +393 record. Not only that, but he took the hardest road to get there, beating all three of those players who finished with just one loss. Round one saw him dispatch Steve Hartsman, 456-385, matching Steve's finds of SOMEBODY and YEARLING with BASINET and ATOMIZE. In the next game, he matched up against Dave Kinzer and won 435-337 with bingos of GROANED and TUTORING (TROUTING is also a word, although TROUTED* isn't). Dave forgot the #1 rule of playing Andy, which is to try to match Andy's strategic approach, that is to say, bingo as much as possible. Charles Reinke also needed to be reminded of that rule, as he fell to Andy 393-347, his sole MITERING no match for Andy's SNORTER and NITROSO. Andy put the fourth and final feather in his cap by trouncing Ron Malzer, 515-337, finding VERBENAS, CORONAE, and CHEATING for his bingos. A more skillful writer would be able to wring a cheating joke out of that one, but I've got nothing.

2nd Charles Reinke enjoyed a 4-1 +153 record, hitting that exact W/L total for the third week in a row. With Mark absent, Charles got just one Collins-lexicon game for the night, that being a round-one encounter vs. Thomas Reinke that he won 499-461. Thomas landed SURETIES, IRATELY, and ILIACUS#, while Charles had SIMPLER and REORGED. Round two saw Charles take on both Lynda Finn and Ron Malzer; deploying three bingos in each of those games, he managed to win both, 432-335 vs. Lynda (ULEXITES, UNADDED, SAINTDOM) and a high-scoring 456-403 vs. Ron (KERATOSE, LOUNGED, WINDLES). The aforementioned loss to Andy Bohnsack, 347-393, put the kibosh to Charles' ever-present "go undefeated" plans, but he recovered just enough to pull out a close win over Bryan Benwitz, 441-430. Bryan hit BLONDINE (which takes a D!) and SCAUPER; Charles had TANBARKS and ROTINIS. (Long-timers will remember the bad old days when the only bingo in IINORST was the harder-to-spot IRONIST)

3rd Steve Hartsman finished 3-1 +134, a nice little bit of momentum heading into the weekend's up-north tournament in Hudson. He smartly got his loss out of the way early when he was felled by Andy Bohnsack, 385-456. Remembering last week's loss to Helen Flores, Steve was granted a chance at revenge and took full advantage with a mammoth victory, 525-364. MOTTLING, SPIRIEST, and LARIATS were Steve's bingos in that one. Steve also picked up an impressive win over club leader Thomas Reinke, 419-396, thanks to MARTINET and PASTORS. Finishing the night with a match against John Bialek, Steve had to sweat a little bit as he came away with a 375-354 win, finding ENROOTS to John's LOANERS.

Thomas' BIRDLIFE was word of the week. It pluralizes to BIRDLIFES, not BIRDLIVES*.