scrabble update: same old, same old

Scrabble club last night, first time in a month. For people who have not followed my earlier Scrabble weblog entries, I play in the B division at the Madison Scrabble Club (or, as its technically known to the National Scrabble Association, Scrabble Club #247), and I have long had but never achieved this goal of just once going undefeated, winning all four of my games. The last few times at club, I have won my first three games only to lose the last one. This week, despite the rustiness of not having played, it happened again.

My first three games, I rolled to big wins, making the bingoes VERBIAGE, TREASON, DENIALS, and CLOISTER. In the first game, I won despite allowing my opponent to play *OPENESS despite being pretty sure it wasn't good without the second N. In the third game, I also had SATINE+O on my rack (more about the legendary SATINE+ bingo stem another day, perhaps) with an open lane to play a bingo across a triple word score. Even though I saw that it made ATONIES, I convinced myself that this wasn't actually a word but that *ISOTANE was. ISOTANE is not a word (ISOTONE is) and my play was challenged off, but I still marched to victory.

After winning the first three games--especially since I hadn't wanted to be out late necessarily anyway--I thought about bolting, but I decided that this would forever sully my goal of having an undefeated night if I had one only because I dodged playing a fourth game. So, in my last game, I played this guy Ray who someone said writes crossword puzzles. This showed when he made the bingo PASTIES by hooking the first S onto MEW to make SMEW, which apparently is some kind of duck. From there, or more precisely from his bingo GUNNIES three turns later, the rout was on, and I was lucky only to lose by 102 points.