Easter weekend Scrabble


I played six games over the long weekend: four with Mark and two with Grant. I split them evenly, winning two against Mark and one against my brother. I am happy to report that Mark out-bingoed me. I averaged 379 to his 335. It was a low-scoring weekend; of our eight scores, I had the highest game with a mere 400. Here are the bingo breakdowns:

CraigMark
gASSIER (72)SOAPIER (71)
RATTInG (64)RUMInATE (77)
MAGNETED (74) *TAlKIES (81)
NEEdERS (60)
CraigGrant
INVERSED (66)ELUANtS (68)
ZEOLiTES (82)EGALItE (62)
TRANNIES (68)
RESTORE (88)
OBVIATE (70)
RELAXIN (76)

It is a frustrating experience to play Grant, as his playing habits are enough to make me want to throttle him. In thirty years of Club and Tournament play I have sat across surprisingly few opponents whom I would pull my hair out and call annoying yet I wonder if I only allow myself to feel the need to strangle Grant because he is my brother. He should use a thick Sharpie to track his tiles as his habit of using a ballpoint pen is so forceful that it shakes the table as he obliterates each letter from the letter grid. Grant also plays a psych-out game where he tries to intimidate his opponent. He does not realize how foolish this psychological approach is yet there is no sense in telling him as he won’t listen. After I played INVERSED he held me on it for ages, talking to himself and wondering what kind of ploy I was throwing him. Who cares about any of that: all he should be considering is the validity of the word. I refused to meet his eyes when he put me on hold since he believes he has the psychic intuition to tell if I am bluffing and I want him to sweat it out as long as possible. Grant also reveals all his tiles when he holds the blank (provided he has good ones), without playing a word yet. He does so in anticipation of playing a bingo and no doubt in my opinion to psych out his opponents. They’re supposed to sweat it out in tenterhook anticipation, waiting for the bingo they know is going to come down. Grant also drops several bingos down on various open spots on the board, for what reason? Does he need to because he can’t visualize the word on the board? I don’t think so. He’s showing off that he was able to find a variety of bingos in his rack-with-a-blank. I call it a time waster, and in one of our games his clock wound down to 00:00.

Grant scored his only two bingos in the first game wherein he beat me 381-370. My final rack was ELNTT and I would have won the game by one point had I known LITTEN. I blame my lack of word knowledge for the loss. Five of my last bingos were all in game two which I won 488-310.

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