Mark and I played four games this weekend and I won three. I might have won all of them but as I replayed my losing game with Mark, I probably would have lost it anyway. I averaged 383 and Mark 329. Here is the bingo breakdown:
| Craig | Mark |
| BAFFleD (69) | eNDLESS (72) |
| ESTRANGE (70) | MASTERED (74) |
| ANTIWEEd (74) | TASKErs (79) * |
| WAITRON (91) | ERoSION (71) |
| SKILLED (77) |
I was happy to see the only bingos in my first rack: ABDFF?? only makes one seven-letter word, no eights, and only one nine: BuFFAloeD.
I held Mark forever on TASKErs. He had to find a bingo with an S in second or third position, and that rack makes so many such words, including bASKETs, cASKETs, gASKETs as well as the harder-to-find miSTAKE. I did not like TASKErs (its anagrams are SKATErs, STAKErs, STrAKEs and STrEAKs) yet his tiles made so many other common words that he could have played. Simply put, I lose if I let it stay, regardless of whether or not it was a phony, so I should have challenged it, especially after keeping Mark on hold for five minutes. Why didn’t I realize this? My rack after I played WAITRON was CDEIIOV, which I saw made OVICIDE yet there was nowhere to play it. Since I had no comeback bingo, the strategy should have been obvious to me: challenge TASKErs. In the postmortem I reasoned that had I challenged off TASKErs, I might have left that bingo lane open in order to play VOICED. I would have extended my lead but it would have been easy for Mark to find another bingo. He still would have won even if he went five minutes overtime trying to find it. It all seems so obvious now: challenge TASKErs and secure the win by blocking that bingo lane with something from CDEIIOV.