Mark and I played five games this past weekend and I won all of them, however I wouldn’t have won the last game if I hadn’t pulled out the blank as the last tile in the bag. I always draw my tiles one at a time, even when I know that I am emptying the bag, and the blank was the last remaining tile in two of our games. In the final game I needed a bingo to win, so I fished off a duplicate N, leaving me to draw the last tile in the bag. With the score in Mark’s favour 390-333, I was shocked to discover the final tile was the blank, and I was able to bingo to an L to make ORIENtAL, scoring 68. My average score was 407 and Mark’s was 348. Here is the bingo breakdown:
| Craig | Mark |
| HANDLED (78) | TRENDIER (68) |
| AMNESIA (67) | BAiLERS (71) |
| DEVISING (76) | sTEPPES (68) |
| sCHOLAR (101) | NeAREST (71) |
| MOoTING (70) | DATINGS (66) |
| AUNTIEs (78) | OILIEST (70) |
| dETOXES (75) | EVALUATE (86) |
| ORIENtAL (68) |
In the only game where Mark scored no bingos, he nonetheless played a word with a bingo score: ZERo, which earned 87, his highest play during our five games.
In one of our games my rack was ACCITX? and I saw CICATRIX, which required me to build through an R or another I. Unfortunately I couldn’t play this low-frequency bingo. I played CACTI instead.
My opening draw in game four was the horrid DFMRWWZ. I exchanged six, keeping the Z, and then proceeded to draw six more consonants.