I won all three last night and faced tougher opponents over last week. Two of the eight bingos I played were phonies, which just proves that if you’re going to get away with an illegitimate word, make sure it sounds plausible both to your opponent as well as to yourself.
366-277 against Libero. I played jAYBIRDS (63) and LUNGEING (74) and Libero played ReLENTS (73). The only other bingo I could have played with my first bingo rack was mAYBIRDS. The blank I had used as a j was the only blank I would pick tonight.
507-388 against Anna. Anna opened with MM and my rack was AEEKLRT. Before she played I hoped she’d give me an I for TEARLIKE, but when I saw the M’s I tried instead to find a 7LW. When I couldn’t see any, I looked at 8LW through the M and then saw TELEMARK (65). I doubted it at first, but then convinced myself that it was a legitimate word as I knew I had heard it somewhere and words like that don’t mysteriously occur to me. I also played PIQUANTE (110)* and RENAILS (83) while Anna played TOdDIES (88) and STuNNER (64).
444-400 against Tony. I played ALGICIDE (64), GELATINE (61) and STENTING (70) £ and Tony played TONEArMS (86). I played my first bingo through the second I and I see that ACDEGIL makes no 7LW yet plays through only the I to make an 8LW. I was hoping to play NETTINGS as my third bingo yet Tony blocked it, which nevertheless enabled me to play STENTING instead. Tony held me for a long time on that word, and I thought he might challenge it off. I had heard STENT used as a verb numerous times two years ago when I had kidney stone trouble and had a stent inserted into my ureter. As it turns out, STENTING is Collins-only and perhaps Tony, as an avid Collins player, believed it was acceptable in the North American lexicon as well. He used it to his advantage as the S was on the top row to the immediate right of a DLS, thus slotting his M in TONEArMS on the valuable hotspot. I won this game because Tony did not see the only place where I could play my V. Underneath the r in TONEArMS was an E, thus the 2LW rE. It wasn’t obvious to see that I could go out with rEV. Instead of blocking it with his own V, Tony played JO instead for 18. He had over two minutes left and felt he should have scanned the board better and would have found it.