1st Steve Hartsman topped a diminished field of six players with a 3-1 +128 record. In game one, his poor luck against Bryan Benwitz continued; after all was said and done, it was a 505-304 win for Bryan, who had SPUMANTE, RARITIES, and SIDESMAN to Steve's REGRATES. The best remedy to losing a game by 200 points is to win the next game by 200 points, and Steve put that old adage into practice with a 512-299 win over Helen Flores in the second round. He piled on bingos of RELOANED, PAESANI, ENAMOUR, and the phony GRISTLED* (a phony common enough that it was played at our club once before, in 2015). Steve wrapped up his first-place effort with a 391-308 win over Dave Kinzer (getting ESTUARY and DILATION) and a 413-380 victory against Richard lauder (finding the ultra-common SERIATE, which is the sixth-most common bingo played at our club, with 29 occurrences since 2011; its anagram, AERIEST, has been played 26 times).

2nd Helen Flores went 3-1 -133, timing her strike for exactly the week when certain high-level players were absent to secure a coveted writeup paragraph. She started off with a tight two-point win over Dave Kinzer, 364-362, countering his Word-of-the-Week PARFAIT with her own GROANER. Helen's luck took a nosedive as she was steamrollered (Steverollered?) by Steve Hartsman 299-512, but she quickly recovered to get a big win off of Dennis Lloyd, 442-381. Helen found DERISION and WARDENS in that one, while Dennis had PALLIATE and FIDGETS. But Helen's signature win waited until the last round, as she felled the bingo-knowledge titan Bryan Benwitz by a score of 412-395, making her the winner in two of their last five contests. Bryan was held to a single bingo of REMORSE, while Helen had SNAKIER and DEMONIC, proving once again that "bingoing early and often" is never a bad strategy.