I won one game last night to take my record to 5-7:
315-484 against Jared. Jared played the game’s only bingos, ORFRaYS (67), TONSURED (59) and RAINOUTs (66). I did not draw well. I wrote down six promising racks and when I checked them I discovered that not only were there no 7LW but not even one rack made a valid 8LW! The only rack I recorded that yielded any eights was ADEITTU, which makes ALTITUDE, APTITUDE, ATTITUDE, LATITUDE and SITUATED.
335-460 against Alex. I played RESITING (74) and Alex played FLARING (72), OUTROADS (74)* and AvODIRE (80). We each got a phony down which the other held, but accepted. Mine was LEXIC, which ended just above the bottom TWS row. I’m surprised neither of us under-hooked it with an -A. In this game I also recorded six of my racks, only three of which produced 8LW. Alex opened with WAW (18) and my rack was EEINRRU. That rack builds through JQST: ENQUIRER, REINJURE, REINSURE, REUNITER and UNRETIRE. With CEEILNN I had LENIENCE, LENIENCY and NECKLINE. And with AELSSTZ I only had SPATZLES.
407-346 against Mark E. I played first and opened the game with TIDEWAY (86). Mark built FLATNESS (72) through my A. I recorded five racks that looked promising yet none of them produced any 8LW. This is so uncommon for a Club postmortem, where the vast majority of my racks produced no 8LW at all. When I record possible 8LW most often they are racks that could have been played in theory, as in the preceding game there wasn’t a J or Q lying around at the beginning of the game. In this game, after my bingo, I drew AAEIINR. Vowel-heavy, yet I know my five-vowel 8LW. The two consonants I had with bingo-friendly DNST already on the board didn’t make that rack seem discouraging, yet that replacement draw produces no 8LW at all. For my second move I decided to play ANTIAIR (13) instead, getting AXE (42) on my third play.