Mark and I played four games of Scrabble this weekend and each won two. I rarely play nine-letter bingos, and when I do, they are almost always cases where the two other tiles on the board are the first and last letters in the word and I fill them in with the seven on my rack [1] or the two letters were side-by-side that I build from, around, or to [2]. I hardly ever play disconnected nines. Now I have played nines where one of the two letters already on the board was either the first or the last letter in the word and the other letter was somewhere in the middle. What I find the hardest to play are the disconnected nines where the two other tiles are not connected and are floating within the word. The first ever such nine I played was in 2006, after thirteen years of Club and Tournament play [3]. I thought for sure I would have blogged about my second such nine, but apparently I didn’t. It was RETINITES against Dave Krook at the ninth Canadian National Scrabble Championship in 2016. I do not recall what two tiles were already on the board but I will probably find the score sheet in my pile by my computer desk.
Today I repeated that same word through two interior disconnected tiles in a game against Mark. With no place to play any of the four seven-letter anagrams I had on my rack, I had to look for other possibilities. I saw the I and the T with two spaces between them and clear rows on either side and then fit my tiles between and around them to play RET(I)NI(T)ES. Mark challenged it unsuccessfully.
In one of the games I won against Mark I was happy to make an even 600, in a four-bingo game to his one. I played AUREOLE, TALLIED, NATURIST and MOOrAGE to Mark’s TASTIEr.
I can only recall ever playing one ten-letter bingo, and that was against Zev Kaufman at the Toronto Scrabble Club [4].
[1] (T)EMPERIN(G)
[2] (GO)ODLIEST, WH(IT)ETAIL, SALTPET(ER)
[3] S(C)A(N)TNESS
[4] (ABO)MInAtED