I won two out of three last night to take my record to 101-18. There are two meetings left in the Club’s 34th season yet Mark and I will be away on September 3, so my last night of season 34 will be next week.
472-288 against Jude. I admit to not playing my best game against Jude–in spite of my sizable victory–because my opponent is not a strong player so I didn’t test myself too much. I say that because I wrote down some interesting racks yet consciously didn’t bother to look for bingos hard enough because I figured out that I would bingo with easier racks on a subsequent turn. That is not a good strategy, in spite of playing two: ZInCITES (70) and BLUNTER (77). My opening rack was EENSYZ? and I slapped down ZEN for 24. Had I given that rack more thought I should have spotted ENZYmES for 106. The Bonus-Bingo letters that night were ES, so a play such as ENZYmES might certainly have stood a chance at winning. My second rack was CEISTY? which forms three 7LW (CYSTEIn, CYSTInE and SoCIETY) but I would only have been able to play SoCIETY. I spent a while with that rack and just played off the Y to make YEN (6), hoping to front-hook it with EYEN to make a DWS-DWS as long as the E was in fifth position. I was ready to play dICIEST or ICkIEST (89) but Jude blocked the spot. I then built ZInCITES from the Z in ZEN. I considered a 9LW starting with PE- and I see that my rack could have made PESTICIdE. With the blank so far into the word I could have formed PESTICI and then the rest would have been obvious. I held the rack BDELSST which makes two 8LW: BiLSTEDS and DEBTLeSS.
395-334 against Sid. I played UPTIMES (77) and TASERING (70) and Sid played GaRNERs (87). One of my racks was EVEREST and I saw an open D yet chickened out of REVESTED. I held the rack AAAHNST which makes four 8LW, three of which are anagrams with a G: ASHTANGA, ASTHANGA, ATAGHANS and ATHANASY.
Mark played a brilliant 9LW triple-triple through ON, pOISONING (131), against Dave K. He won, 437-420. I could see the final three letters on each player’s rack: Mark was left with III and Dave held LLL. Mark was almost finished putting all the tiles away when he realized with regret that he should have taken a photo of the board. He really looked sad about missing the opportunity. I asked him to take a picture of Dave’s score sheet, which, combined with his own, could be used to recreate the board layout. So instead of Dave’s yellow tiles, we recreated the board, below, two days later at Mark’s place. We were pulling our hair out because an unaccounted-for I was left over. I could only imagine that this I was left in the bag without either player knowing. I know what I saw at the end: Mark was left with III and Dave with LLL with Mark playing out.
304-482 against Chris Lo. I suffered through consecutive racks with either one vowel, which I used to make a short word, or no vowels at all. Chris played TALISMAN (76) and fILAREE (71) and got 57 for JUGa. I played SUCTION (70). One of my racks was the humorous EATFOOD which makes no 7- or 8LW yet two 9LW: FlOODgATE and spADEFOOT.