I won both games against Mark yesterday yet the first game was a case of it-ain’t-over-till-it’s-over as I pulled out a win by a margin of one point. The games weren’t high-scoring, either, as I averaged 367 versus Mark’s 350. Here is the bingo breakdown:
| Craig | Mark |
| EASTERN (72) | sALVAGE (63) |
| DISTIlL (78) | RACIEsT (72) |
| REASONER (70) |
Mark was leading for much of the first game (I only overtook him for one turn when I played EASTERN) and his last play, sALVAGE, emptied the bag of six tiles. The score by then was 344-233. He had taken the spot I had opened in order to play his bingo. In so doing, I was able to play my own, overlapping the first three letters of DISTIlL next to the last three letters of sALVAGE to make AD, GI and ES. My final play scored 78, and I got twice the value of the six letters that were on Mark’s rack: DORUVX which was 17 × 2 = 34, taking me from 233 + 78 + 34 = 345 and a win by one.