My 2021 win-loss record against Mark was 188-38, or an 83.2% win record. In 2020 at the height of COVID lockdown we played more games and I stood at 201½-51½, with a 79.6% win record.
We played seven games between New Year’s Eve and January 2 and I won six. Here is the bingo breakdown:
| Craig | Mark |
| MISWORE (80) * | DECODERS (82) |
| ANTERIOR (62) | SALLyING (68) |
| GeTTErS (73) | tIGHtER (98) |
| DILUENT (78) | GRITTIER (63) |
| BUNgLER (77) | PREssES (82) |
| EMPTIES (86) | pATIENCE (70) |
| SARODEs (62) | |
| LEANEST (77) | |
| DISRATED (72) | |
| PEARLING (89) | |
| LEVITIES (65) | |
| RIDDERS (74) | |
| NOTICERS (89) | |
| IONOMERS (90) | |
| TERRANE (67) | |
| MInIBAR (81) | |
| STANDERS (80) |
The first move in our New Year’s (Eve) showdown was my opening phony MISWORE. It sounded plausible–as in the past tense of the verb to wear something incorrectly or awkwardly–and I didn’t think that I was risking a challenge playing it. Only when I looked for anagrams after the game did I discover that the word was not acceptable. I plugged in its infinitive MISWEAR only to see that it anagrammed to SEMIRAW, a word that I already knew. So perhaps had I thought backwardly, as I sometimes do when I ponder words that I am considering challenging, if I had questioned the validity of MISWORE I might have looked at MISWEAR and realized that it anagrammed to SEMIRAW–and remembered that SEMIRAW had no anagrams. Thus, MISWORE must be a phony.
I like that Mark found a bingo by making the blank a y in SALLyING. It reminded me of my CORyZAS play two months ago, where the only seven-letter word in that rack required the blank to be used as a y. Sometimes we need patience to go through the alphabet to find a bingo play.
In consecutive games Mark had both blanks and made them the same letter: tIGHtER and PREssES.