Mark and I played in yesterday’s six-game WGPO Scrabble tournament held at the Milton Public Library. As an employee of the Mississauga Library System for close to 42 years, our Sunday hours were always afternoon-only from 1:00-5:00. Solely based on my Mississauga experience–and without checking the Milton library’s hours beforehand–I just presumed that the tournament would have access to the library before it opened, believing that it would open to the public in the afternoon. Thus I was surprised to see that when we walked in at 10:00 the library was open with patrons milling about. They opened at 9:30 on Sunday. Wow–if this is what is in store for Mississauga then I am glad to be retired.
It has been years since I was the top seed in a tournament, and my rating (1762) was over two hundred points higher than the player ranked at number two. I felt confident in my skills to excel yet knew that any of my opponents, whose ratings ranged between 1330 and 1548, could take me down. Mark on the other hand was ranked last in the second division of six players, so he was under no pressure. I on the other hand had to win at least five games just to retain my rating.
01 Steve Ozorio 429-262. I played FRUITERS (65) and ANTIRUSt (64) and Steve got down RELEnTING through -IN-. That nice 9LW was his first attempt as I had challenged off his BETOILING £ and later challenged off his KNUT £.
02 Michael Lancashire 391-388. I played RETICLE (67) and UrBANEST (80) and Michael played CORTINA (69). It all came down to the endgame as I was able to pull it off and needed the time to plan it.
03 Sharmaine Farini 420-317. I played DEORBIT (67), FIASCOS (71) and TAMbOURA (62) and Sharmaine played REsTORE (70). My rack after my first bingo was DNOSUWY and through an R I saw the possibility of playing UNDROWSY. I knew that there were many unusual UN- words and, with a score of 115-45, decided to play it on my next turn. This was a perfect example of overcoming my word timidity and taking a chance. If it was a valid word and I withheld playing it (it would have scored 82) I would have been more disappointed in myself than having played it only to lose my turn for trying it. Sharmaine challenged it off, yet she could do no more than block the R with VAIR for 8. Perhaps she saw that I was going to play WORDY there for 32 if it had remained open. Thus in the end, my attempt really only cost me eight points. (BTW, the shortest steal for DNOSUWY is WONDroUSlY.) I ended up finding an even better play after the R was blocked, to score 33 on my next move. I was pleased to find FIASCOS yet Sharmaine took the more lucrative spot just before I played it. I was lucky to have two spots to put it down. That rack only plays through an E to make FIASCOES. One of my retirement cleanup jobs is going through hundreds of old Scrabble score sheets and reviewing words. Thanks to a recent score sheet review, TAMbOURA gave me my third bingo. I saw its anagram MARAbOUT first, and that triggered a memory that the word had an anagram. I was pleased to find it, as TAMbOURA was the better play and scored more.
04 Ben Lam 420-302. I played RAINING (70) which later became TRAINING and then I extended it to TRAININGs when I played my second bingo, sENaRII (71). At the end of the game I had AXILLAE yet nowhere to play it, and there was no open M for MAXILLAE.
Mark and I were both leading our divisions undefeated after four games, yet there were still two games to play.
05 John Dungey 299-440. I was ahead for almost the entire game then John got down two bingos, LEANEST (79) and SAVvIEr (94). I could only score big with JOINTS (67).
06 Michael Lancashire 324-510. The winner of this game would win the tournament as my position after five games was 4-1 and Michael was at 3-2 yet his spread was higher than mine, so a loss would knock me out of first place. Michael opened with COUNTER (74). I challenged off his TAILWARD* which brought me into the lead by a small margin yet Michael’s last three moves were all bingos which dug the knife in deep: PANElED (75), BOOSTING (74) and TRiTONES (82). The final outcome might not have changed had I managed to find the anagram of my unplayable SHELTIE. SHEITEL as it turns out would have fit underneath PANElED on the bottom row, placing the H on the DLS and the second E on the TWS, for a total score of 106, which would have brought me to 385. Since I did not find SHEITEL, I played HENT for 33 through the N in PANElED. Michael played BOOSTING immediately afterward, which brought him to 408. He left one tile in the bag. Who knows what additional tiles I might have drawn had I played SHEITEL instead of HENT? I would have picked four more, where the remaining tile pool was (DEHJMNORST?), and that would have deprived Michael of picking up enough tiles to bingo again. As I retained EILS after dropping HET I felt confident drawing into a bag heavy in consonants, yet if I did in fact play SHEITEL, then I risked getting a rack full of them. There was an E on the centre right TWS square which was open so I could have played through it since there were clear paths for 8LW beginning or ending in E. However, since Michael’s next rack was GINOOST he might have elected to play GOONIEST through that E for 60, taking him to a hypothetical narrower lead of 394-385, since any bingo play I would need to make after that would be more constrained by it having to be an 8LW beginning with BO-. With that O still in the bag, there was no guarantee that I would even be able to play there, since I also risked picking any of the clunky consonants, like DHJM, in my replacement draw. Even if I was lucky enough to pick the blank, chances are remote that I would have found a bingo beginning with BO-. It is for this reason that I think Michael’s better play was to play GOONIEST for fourteen fewer points to block the risky E lane. As it turns out, after I played HENT I chose DHJ to go along with EILS, so if I did play SHEITEL, the first three letters in my replacement draw would have been those awful letters. Thus Michael could have played BOOSTING or GOONIEST and would have won anyway. So not seeing SHEITEL may not in fact have cost me the game, yet it definitely would have kept Michael within the low 400’s as he would have only picked four tiles after BOOSTING or GOONIEST. During this game I had the new word ABYEING which I was hoping to play but Michael blocked it.
I finished second at 4-2 +64.