699 for 33

Last night the Mississauga Scrabble Club marked its 33rd anniversary. A dinner was provided for all players. We were treated by appearances from members of the Cambridge Club as well as some local faces whom we hadn’t seen in a while.

I won two out of three to take my record to 61-8:

370-385 against Trevor. I played TARTUfFE (70). My replacement draw was DIIMNOR which anagrams to MIDIRON, which would have fit underneath the TA- in TARTUfFE. Instead I played MIRIN along the top TWS row for 38. Early in the game I held AEEORTT and couldn’t find any 8LW yet noted what was open on the board at the time. There was an L and a P, and I missed the should-be obvious TOLERATE, as well as OPERETTA. Those are the only letters that AEEORTT builds through. Trevor played SERIATE (85) and UNVALuED (72). The game hinged on my unsuccessful challenge of POCO (19). Had I left it, I would have dumped some wonky consonants to play WONKY (30) through an N. Instead, Trevor got to play next and used that N for UNVALuED. However, Trevor still could have played a 7LW off my Y in WONKY, as his rack of ADELUV? made three bingos, where AVULsED would have fit, hooking the Y with AY or YA. Trevor however stated that he only saw DEVALUe. VAULtED was the other 7LW, but impossible to play. I do not know if Trevor would have eventually seen AVULsED.

Director Shan:

Battle of the V’s: Vivina versus Vimalan are in the foreground. Infixed V’s Kaveri versus Yvonne are playing to their right and Trevor and V-less me are playing next to the window.

Shan and Jason B. are in the foreground. Sid and Mark are playing to their right and Barry and Valeria are playing by the window:

Deji and Steve are in the foreground and Dave N. and Charles are playing by the window:

Abdul is on the very left. David N. and Prashanth are in the foreground. Danny is to their right. Ramona and John D. are playing at the adjacent table and Suzanna and Dave K. are playing by the window. Vivina is sitting behind Prashanth and Yvonne is on the far right of the photo:

After the first game we gathered for a group picture:

Over the 33 years of Club existence we have produced three styles of T-shirts. I am wearing the first model, which featured a crossword motif on the back only (hence my position in the photo). Valeria is wearing the second model, which was produced in a variety of colours. My own such shirt is in forest green. Jean and Charles are wearing the latest model, which also exists as a hooded sweatshirt:

Charles and Valeria:

My second game (scroll down for photo) was one that comes along maybe one in ten thousand games. I played Jonathan, and achieved my second-highest score ever, winning 699-319. 714 is my record. My first four moves were all 8LW. I started with GIRLIESt (77). I took a long time, in fact the longest time for a single turn during this game, trying to figure out what to do with my first rack. I held EIILRS? and while I saw 8LW beginning or ending with the G in GODLY, I really wanted to play a bingo through the L, because a DWS-DWS is worth more than a TWS. I considered fRILLIES but rejected it, and I see that other possible 8LW are mILLIERS and StILLIER. I should have recalled the latter as it came up recently. However, since a TWS would involve a G and a DLS, provided I didn’t play the blank on the DLS space, the score for a DWS-DWS would be 78 versus 77 for a TWS, so I didn’t fret over it too much.

My next rack was DIOTUW? and the UW combination didn’t bother me as I saw WIDeOUTS to the S in GIRLIESt. However the W on the TWS row gave Jonathan some easy comeback points so I looked for other plays. I saw OUTWILeD (72), which Jonathan challenged unsuccessfully.

On my third rack I saw CURABLE immediately since the -ABLE suffix was already there, but there was noplace for a 7LW (other than making a series of 2LW overlaps), so I had to look for 8LW. The board at that time allowed for 8LW through the OUTW in OUTWILeD or the LIESt in GIRLIESt. I did not hesitate to play CUREABLE (76), as many words that end in -E retain that E when adding the -ABLE suffix. There are dozens of them, and I am not referring to those that require the E to maintain pronunciation (such as TRACEABLE or MANAGEABLE). TUNEABLE, USEABLE, HIREABLE, SHAREABLE and SPAREABLE, for example, can all also be spelled without the internal E. So I dropped down CUREABLE without giving it a second thought. As it turns out, there are no words that end with the pattern -UREABLE. All roots that end in –URE lose that E when adding -ABLE; thus ENDURABLE, INSURABLE and SECURABLE. CURABLE is the only acceptable spelling, yet I saw later that I could have played that rack through the L or S as BRUCELLA or ARBUSCLE, although I was only vaguely familiar with the former.

With my fourth rack at first I saw STERNITE playing from the S in GIRLIESt but didn’t want to slot an E in seventh position in a TWS-TWS row–that’s got to be the riskiest position for any letter in a TWS-TWS row. As the Club’s first director Shaun Goatcher often said, “Always look for a better play”, and even when faced with a bingo like STERNITE (that, in fact, scored more, at 70) I still looked. I decided upon INTERTIE (68). And as you can see from the photo below, the second E in INTERTIE never even got used. I can well imagine that the second E in STERNITE would have been used if it was placed right above the lower right TWS.

When Jonathan played his bingo TATTLING (59) he slotted the G in the middle of a TWS-TWS row. I later used it to play STINGERS as a triple-triple for 140. With four tiles left in the bag, I saw that the tile pool wasn’t too bad and hoped I’d get a chance to balance my rack by getting rid of some clunky vowels. There were two bingo lanes open: that dangling S in the top right corner as well as an overlap opportunity with the W in WRONG. Jonathan played two tiles (AV to make VAR for 10), leaving two in the bag. I unburdened myself of IO with ROID / OXO (17) and found my final rack was AACDDIN. Hmm…some annoying duplication here. I moved my tiles around to form the -IC suffix and words incorporating ACID, then found CANDIDA. I saw that in spite of the two bingo lanes, there was a chance Jonathan might still make a play that ended up blocking both. All the while I did the math, thinking that a 700 game was in reach. Jonathan played FOE (14), leaving the top TWS row for CANDIDAS (89). My score advanced to 685 and I got 14 points from Jonathan’s unused EEPSU. A tainted win for its phony bingo, perhaps. In terms of the power tiles, Jonathan had JQSXZ and I had SSS?? Jonathan had 7:50 on his clock and I had 9:58, which just shows that dream games like this play themselves: I only needed fifteen minutes with amazing tiles like this to work with.

525-324 against Jean. Another dream game. I played COLORIsT (70), HARMONY (82), SCRIPTED (66), LABORING (86) and got 45 for adding the UN- to SCRIPTED. I was not 100% sure of MOANY, and soon after I played it I considered that its possible inflections already anagrammed to other words: MOANIER = MORAINE and ROMAINE and MOANIEST = AMNIOTES, MASONITE and MISATONE. I never considered that perhaps MOANY was one of those rare short Y-ending words that didn’t inflect, like GAPY. When I realized that AMNIOTES didn’t anagram to MOANIEST, I knew it was a phony:

The cumulative point total of my three games was 1594.