Stats for October 31, 2018
1st Thomas Reinke celebrated Halloween by dressing as the best Scrabble player in the whole world (himself) and winning all his games. He, not without controversy, beat David in the first 489-297, with bingos of ERGOTIC, GLIADINS, and the phony UNGLADLY*. Maybe if he had realized that UNGLAD* isn't even a real adjective he wouldn't have played the even unrealer adverb form of it. He then beat Bryan 455-419 with the help of the nine-letter MEATINESS (n. the state of being really super-duper meaty to the max, anagram AMNESTIES). He also played PARTIERS. PARTIER has the normal definition, but also a secondary abnormal definition, "more PARTY, divided into different-colored parts". Which means that PARTIEST is also good. Against Dave in the third round, both players faced a crisis as a vast majority of the E's were played early in the game. Dave's EUSTELE and Thomas' SEEDBED had a lot to do with the shortage of the most important vowel. In the final game, he faced (who else) Charles, and won 420-340 with bingos of BAREGES and DROWSES. Their combined three bingos seems like a low total for them; perhaps they were regretting not partaking in the tradition of pilfering free candy from unsuspecting households simply by uttering the incantation "trick or treat".
2nd Bryan Benwitz, like Thomas, came dressed as the best Scrabble player in the whole world (Nigel Richards) and went 3-1 +158, good for second place. He prevailed in a relatively low-scoring game with Charles, 383-358. The bingo advantage was 3-0 in his favor, with him playing ANEARED, ENNEADS, and SOLDERS and Charles playing nothing but dinky little plays. His game with the other twin ended 419-455, a result that would've been different had the blank on his final rack not been accompanied by three I's. Relatedly, remember to vote in the upcoming club referendum to remove two I's from the game and replace them with one E and one S. In the third round, he was victorious against Richard 417-283. Richard played ZOSTERS early, but then watched the tiles dry up with squinted eyes as Bryan played SQUINTER. Similar to PARTY, SQUINT is also an adjective in addition to its normal usage, which means SQUINTEST is a word. For the final game, he won a close one against Gail 380-345. Gail played COSTERS (n. a hawker of fruits or vegetables, but not both apparently) while Bryan played THINNEST. Something we are definitely not going to be after gorging on leftover Halloween candy.
3rd Dave Gilligan notched a 3-1 +44 record, his second straight 3-1 performance. He started off with a 307-269 win over Sue where he was slowed down by some sort of phony combination of SIGNORE and SEIGNIOR. There are a lot of ways to spell that set of words, but he eventually got down the normal-but-similar SENIORS. He then beat Gail 371-341 with Gail playing DETAINED and himself playing RENAILED. Against Thomas, he got down the fancy EUSTELE (n. a type of siphonostele, in which the vascular tissue in the stem forms a central ring of bundles around a pith, duh), but lost 281-427. His big game of the night came in the finale, as he slapped down three bingos against Richard and won 445-323. His bingos were SOLDIERY, PARTNERS, and CAULINE (adj. pertaining to a stem). That last one, combined with EUSTELE, makes me think he took the advice to study "stem bingos" a little too literally!
In bingo news, the club is now two unique bingos away from achieving 25 percent bingo coverage. The bingos page on the site currently states that we are already there, but that's due to a rounding error. Who do you believe, your trusted club writeup person, or a computer?
| Avg. Game Score | 367 |
| Avg. Intermediate Score | 0 |
| Avg. Expert Score | 367 |
| Avg. Winning Score | 403 |
| Avg. Losing Score | 330 |
| Avg. Bingo Score | 75 |
