01/02/2015
A F T E R W O R D S
for Monday – 29 December 2014
at a North American Scrabble Club ( #173)
Wednesdays 3:30,4:30,5:30,6:30,7:30,8:30 pm
meeting in Murray, Utah at the 5300 South IHOP
by Jim Fischer
This session (last one of 2014) met earlier on a Monday to work around the New Year's Eve celebration of 31 Dec – 1 Jan. Our previous meeting was also a Monday (12/22) which was a gathering only - for those who needed a Scrabble fix in lieu of the December 24th holiday happenings.
LAST SESSION OF 2014: We had yet another one of our usual full-of-surprises club meetings with one-to-five games played by each of the 10 word formers present.
OH, SO CLOSE: Kent (4-0) advanced his club rating to above the 1900-level finishing the Old Year with a 1912 rating and gaining 17 club-rating points. Of his four wins he won three of them by close margins (3, 3, and 14 points). He had the session's highest-scoring non-bingo ZAXES/63, the plural of Zax which is a tool for cutting roof-slates.
NOTABLE SESSION PLAYER: Josh (2-2) added 20 rating points while his HINTERS/102 was the highest-scoring bingo to go with a hefty 415 per-game average. He played the session's highest-scoring single-game score with his 2nd round game, a 531 (Max had the only other 500-game, a 515 in the 5th round). Among Josh's eight bingos were his FORGIVES/80, PROUDER/76, and HOAGIES/65. He also had an high-scoring non-bingo, FISH/50.
MANY BINGOS PLAYED: Max played seven bingos including JAILERS/90, OVERLAP/80, BLASTERS/76 (anagram of Stablers), and PRISTANE/74 (meaning of a chemical compound) and having five anagrams and, the not-to-be confused with the word Pristine.
Mike (2-2) had five bingos including the eight-letter QUESTORS/88 which is after the nine-letter Quaestors which were Roman magistrates but, an other meaning than Questers which are ones that quest, and he also played ISSUING/80 and the eight-letter TASTEFUL/64. Other longer than seven-letter words were by Pat, Mark and Donna namely TREASURE/60 (anagram of Austerer), FOUNDERS/74 (anagram of Refounds!) and FLOUNCED/70 (to move with exaggerated motions).
Additional words of note included Zana's CARDERS/69 (anagram of Scarred and having to do with cleaning and combing fibers); also Dean's 7-letter ROSEATE/69 (suprisingly, no seven-letter anagrams but assisted by other single letters produce some interesting eight-letter words, earstoNe, Keratose, oLeaster, oPerates, oVereats, Protease and resoNate).
NEW FOR 2015: Beginning with this last session of the Old Year, future words deemed to be most unusual (and/or out-landish) that are played will be spotlighted together with a short discussion of said word/s. An example of a spotlighted word was would be Zana's play of NODDLES/72 a verb, meaning to nod infrequently. A somewhat unrelated word is NODDY a plural noun which has the interesting meaning of a fool. Let's ask Zana to tell us about her play such as, was it a stab-in-the-dark of the kind relished for a spotlighted word, or maybe she just thought she had played Noodles? Surely, more of the unusual and/or out-landish words forthcoming in 2015!
Thanks(!) to our Club Director Mike for being the driving force behind our weekly session's enjoyable times and the many successes of 2014. And, thanks go also to IHOP's attentive wait-staff servers and meal-preparing chefs; they have been accomodating and superb!
Have a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!