1st Bryan Benwitz continued to make incremental progress towards retaking the club's #1 spot with a 3-0 +132 record. His first-round matchup against Ron Malzer featured plenty of fireworks: Ron triple-tripled late with INTEREST for 131 points, but Bryan took the win with his out-bingo of QUAGMIRE. Final score: 457-410. For the next round, Bryan pulled off an impressive feat, scoring that same exact amount of points in a 457-377 win over Charles Reinke, finding bingos of CAJOLING, MADUROS, and VENERATE. Scrabble tip of the day: if you can score exactly 457 points in every single game, you'll probably win a lot of games. Bryan's final game was a close 418-413 victory against Richard Lauder, landing ORDINAL, RECASTS, and DROSERA to Richard's COTTAGE and IMPORTED.

2nd Thomas Reinke suffered just a single loss for the third consecutive week, this time going 3-1 +228. That single loss happened right at the beginning of the night, as he fell 450-469 to Charles Reinke. Reinke vs. Reinke games are often bingo-heavy, and this game was no exception, with Thomas getting CASIMIRE, TORTURED, and XYLONITE# to Charles' ATONIES, GARBLED, and SAGUINS#. The rematch was kinder to Thomas as he got DECAMPS, ORIENTAL, and ENSEALED# to win 468-365. Thomas also scored a win against Dennis Lloyd, 428-315, getting PHLOEMS and CENTURY vs. Dennis' singular STOMPED (Dennis probably wishes that "STOMPED" was a more accurate description of what he did to Thomas in that game). In round four, Thomas got to play the bucket-list word of GADZOOKS (in addition to two other G bingos, GUARDED and PORTAGE) in a 415-384 win against Andy Bohnsack. The club's quest to play every single bingo in the dictionary has overcome a significant roadblock, but words like ZYZZYVA and PIZZAZES and PIZAZZES still loom large.

3rd Richard Lauder got his second-straight 3-1 performance, this time with a spread of +131 and a 411 per-game average. Things started slow with a 368-311 victory against Dave Kinzer where the only bingo on the board was Richard's phony MOONEYED* (MOONEYE is a word, but it's a type of fish - FROGEYE to FROGEYED is an example of an EYE word that takes the D). Richard picked up the pace in round two, getting three bingos (IGNITOR, BOSQUES, RETIRED) to beat Andy Bohnsack 408-381, and his ascent continued when he downed Lynda Finn 453-401, getting a punishing 114-pointer of PREVIEW in the process. Sadly, Richard's 4-0 aspirations were dismantled at the last, as Bryan Benwitz took him out, 418-413.