I won all three last night to take my record to 67-8:
452-405 against Max Panitch. I played first and opened with ANSATED. I did not see the bingo at first, and for a moment I wished I was playing second, in the hope of getting an M for MANDATES or another N for ANDANTES. Turns out there are two more 8LW with that rack, one of them being a dream play I have never made, ASYNDETA. The rack also plays through a Z for STANZAED. I also played PIVOTING (84) and RADIOES (84). One of my racks was NOOTTY? and I missed both bingos, cOTTONY and TOYTOwN, but don’t think there was anyplace for them. Max played TABORINS (61), INSANER (78) as a four-word overlap and got 61 for ZEDs. I got the other blank and used it for CELTs (24). Both of us got our blanks late in the game.
408-216 against Claire. I played SELTSER (76)* and WRINKLED (67). With my first bingo rack I saw the two legit 7LW, STREELS and TRESSEL, both of which would fit in multiple places and even score the same, but I believed SELTSER was an alternate spelling of SELTZER. I had the opportunity to play BECRIMED as a DWS-DWS for 110 yet chickened out of it. Why did I feel it was no good when I saw it immediately, as if I had recognized it from somewhere. So in this game I played a dubious phony yet declined to play a real word for a whole lot more.
460-372 against Ramona. I played second and opened with LITANIES (82) and also played DISHERS (78)*. Ramona found the brilliant SURROUnD (60), which she built to a -D. Thus her rack was the (pretty awful) ORRSUU? –where the letter closest to A is an O– which yields only one 7LW, RUmOURS. There is only one other 8LW, ORdURoUS, which requires another O and thus is composed of triplicate duplication: DOORRSUU. She also scored 65 for QI. I extended her bingo to SURROUnDING (24) exposing the bottom TWS row, but since all the S’s were gone it would require the remaining blank to play a freaky 12LW as SURROUnDINGs. Ramona made a blocking play to thwart any such -s hook. I did pick the second blank late in the game, but the position of SURROUnDING was such that even if the spot was open, one could score a baby play on the bottom TWS row if the s was in second position (such as AsEA, OsE, EsT) or start a 7LW with an s extending to the middle TWS if one was lucky.