Scrabble #2

I won a "club tournament" today in North Salem, the same place where I particpated in the tourney last month. This time the field wasn't quite as strong as it was in January, the result of it not being a regular tourament, but nonetheless the competition was pretty solid. The fact that I won was even more satisfying given that I was feeling a bit under the weather.


I finished 5-1 with a huge spread. In fact, I averaged 455 pts per game, by far my highest average in a tourney. In the only game I lost, I scored 390, and in the first game, I scored 550, garnering a cute little "High Game" trophy. This is the first trophy I've won since I bowled a 1 (yes, 1 point!) but was lucky enough to be on the winning team in a bowling competition back when I was in single digits.

Here is a list of cool words I played:
"Bingos" (using all of my tiles), by game:
TRIACID, LOATHES, DEVALUE, RETCHING
MEIOSIS
INATELY (phony), SIRLOIN
AUREOLAR
OUTRIDES, UNLACING
REFRIED

Weird non-bingos, total
KIVA, MIGG, WITED, ZAYIN, COOLY, STOOK, and CACHING (I turned CHIN into ACHING and then added the other C)

What's interesting to me is that many expert players average about 2 bingos per game. I was just below that, with 11 in 6 games. But much of my scoring came from smaller words where I managed to get a lot of points (ZAYIN, 54, for example). To me, that's the key to Scrabble. You don't have to know a lot of 7- and 8-letter words in order to win lots of games. Another important trick is to play off letters that aren't conducive to scoring well on the next turn, so you have to look ahead a turn or two. For example, in one game I opened with AIOLI (10 pts) thru my opponent's L, getting rid of 4 vowels, and then on the next turn, I played AUREOLAR for 68.

I can't make the tournament next month, so I'm glad I went today.