Our Club held its annual Christmas party and we had many visitors, including four players from Cambridge. We had a potluck dinner. Unlike last week where I picked all six blanks, on this particular Club night I chose none of them. I won two out of three, to take my record to 37-5:
353-419 against Christopher Sykes. I played ELATERS (77). Chris played first and opened the game with MArTINS (72). He also played VEINLETS (62).
421-354 against Peter H. I played RUSHING (83) and TRAINEE (71). RUSHING takes the -S yet the word landed with the G on the right TWS row. Peter played CoJOINEd (73) and ATONIES (70). I held the rack FGHIRSY and saw an open A yet chickened out of playing GRAYFISH. Sheesh. I should have tried it, since the word occurred to me and I didn’t feel as if I was making up stuff. With the FGHY it would have been low-probability as well as flashy.
483-385 against Alice Van Doren. Alice was visiting from Vermont. We had a bingo blowout, with three each. Alice played first and we each opened with a bingo. Alice opened with HEATErS (76) then smartly front-hooked it with AERIEST / THEATErS (76). She also played ENTOMBEd (62). Playing second, I opened with TERATOID (61) through Alice’s T then got down LOUSIEST (62) and AWARDING (96). I saw my third bingo through the N yet when Alice played in that area I feared ENTOMBEd would ruin it. In fact, I was able to fit it in, making three 2LW overlaps, placing the D on a TLS. Had Alice played the anagram of ENTOMBEd, BOdEMENT, she would have scored 86 and my bingo wouldn’t have come down.
| A | W | A | R | D | I | N | G | ||||
| E | N | T | O | M | B | E | d |
The Club had booked the room from 6 to 11 p.m. to allow us the chance to play four games yet Mark and I only stayed for three.
