South America Blog: Day 7
Thursday, January 21 (At Sea - Games 9-11)
Upon waking, I finished watching the season finale of Lost. Now we're ready to go for Season 6, which starts on February 2, shortly after we get home. Our 2nd consecutive day at sea means 3 more games of Scrabble:
Game 9 vs. Mark Berg (W 468-307)
Bingos: DISLIkE, PLANERs / none
It was fun to get JIGGY (with it) for 34 on the 2nd turn. To partially clean up my horrible rack of AOORUUU and block the easy Z in the triple lane, I played A2 OUZO 13, which opened up the possibility of the incredible nonbingo of B(OUZO)UKI 207. Alas, it never happened. The turning point was my mid-game play of CUBER 36, which drew a challenge. The only decent scoring spot after that was hooking an S to CUBER, and I drew one right after. Holding AMORST?, I passed on the umpteen bingos and played MOST 36, knowing that Mark almost surely held the remaining S (based on his immediately previous play of MOB, which begged for an S in the triple lane), and would likely use it next turn. Leaving myself with AR?, I was likely to draw another bingo very soon. Mark was stuck playing EGO 11, and I promptly bingoed with PLANERs, so it looks like my strategy worked this time.
Game 10 vs. David Engelhardt (L 329-459)
Bingos: CUTTIES / UN(C)LOSED, EtOILES
I built a quick 124-50 lead thanks to CUTTIES, but David quickly took over the lead with UNCLOSED 74 and LyNX 71, and never looked back. In the latter part of the game, I knew I was in trouble when he overdrew and I turned up SS?. Of course, back went the blank, but he picked it up immediately afterwards. After his IKONS 42 put him up by 55 with a few left in the bag, I opened up another bingo lane with ME, which David promptly used for ETOILES 80. Just not my game.
Game 11 vs. Richard Popper (W 465-393)
Bingos: BIASING, TiNWARE / STINTER, RA(T)IfIES
Up 112-74, my bingo of BIASING / (JOY)S / (ZA)G 105 blew the game wide open, and my bongo of TINWARE 74 put it away. I chickened out on my nicely set up outplay of DUNT, costing me a little spread. A word I really ought to know, but I don't think I've ever seen it played. Only my 3rd game of 11 where the blanks were split.
That put me at 6-5 -177 at the midpoint of the tournament, despite being double blanked 6 times. Shelley continued to smush the field, and now sits at 9-2. Believe it or not, that's only good for 4th place thanks to the pure round robin format. Hungry for more Scrabble, Shelley and I played another game in the lounge. I was victorious, but my win was tainted with suckiness. I played FLARY* and NiDATED*, and Shelley was not fooled. And when I played FLARY*, I noticed afterwards that I had OvERFLY. At least I recovered enough to play FLYOvER on the next turn.
Due to the dearth of good activities tonight, we went to the games lounge to play some more Scrabble. We played another couple of games against each other, and then Richard Popper and David Whitley joined us for a few more doubles matches. Overall, I went 5-1 in the informal games today. I could've used some of this luck during the tournament!