I won two out of three last night:
517-294 against Kaveri. I played REMISES (75), REALISED (68), LUNUlATE (71) and QI (65). My rack for my final bingo was AENTUU? There are no 7LW with that rack and the only letter available to play an 8LW was an L. I saw both UNdULATE and UNgULATE but neither would fit. And then LUNUlATE occurred to me. I hesitated playing it at first, mainly because I already had such a lead over my opponent and didn’t want to break 500 with a dishonorable phony. That would look greedy and make me look shameful. Yet the word kept coming back to me; yes, I wouldn’t have thought of it unless I had seen it somewhere. I played it to the lower left TWS and Kaveri didn’t even hold the play. I was relieved when I checked to find it in my NWL.
402-342 against Jonathan. I played HEALINg (68) and Jonathan played TOTTERs (75). From the s, which was in the middle of two TWS squares, Jonathan later played sTRAW for 21. With three letters above sTRAW, stretching to the top right TWS, I saw the possibility of BEDsTRAW (39) yet merely noted the possibility as I didn’t have a B or D to consider fishing for it. One of my racks during this game was AEIMNU? and with no place for any 7 or 8LW I considered building it through -DE-. I found nothing, but to my amazement, there is a 9LW: EUDEMoNIA. I never would have found it, even if you told me the blank was an o.
339-534 against Troy. I was royally clobbered in this game, where Troy averaged 41 points each turn. After he opened with HONKED for 36, I played HAIRY for 22, yet in doing so I kept three vowels and ended up picking four more, so I had to exchange on my next turn. I was never ahead in this game. I could only play RESITED (71) while Troy got down fONDLERS (82) and UNCOMmON (84). My early curse of vowels turned into a dearth as my later racks, all promising, were consonant-heavy yet not so bad, as GILNRST and other similar racks aren’t that bad if only another vowel were available. I could only sit back and take it.