Battle Creek
aibretty proposed going to the Battle Creek tournament over the weekend. I didn't have to coach soccer Saturday morning due to Yom Kippur, and it's likely to be the last tourney I can attend before next year's Arden Cup. Unfortunately, this meant getting picked up at the butt-crack of dawn and driving close to three hours each way. However, Kalamazoo was on the way home allowing for a pilgrimage to the the Bell's Brewery which tragically no longer distributes to Illinois. I brought home a case of beer and a Two Hearted Ale t-shirt.

It was really a pretty fun day, except for the Scrabble, I basically played like ass. I had one great play where I squeezed the first I of IONIUMS under TIT and the S under DETRAIN for 92 points. The rest of the tournament was pretty much a mess. The lowlight was definitely when I held BDENV?? late in the game with the only bingo lines needing to use a W in the first three positions or end in a Y. I didn't know VENDIBLY and didn't come close to seeing WAVEBAND. Instead I fished off the B, with ACEKOOOSTU unseen I hoped to draw an E, A, or U. Sure enough I drew the U, he didn't block the W bingo line, and I out-bingoed with UN(W)eaVED*. Only to have it challenged off. First off: What the fuck? Secondly: No really, what the fuck? I had added all the weave verbs and their conjugations to my cardbox this spring and apparently never wrote them out side-by-side. What's missing here:


weave weaves wove woven weaved
reweave reweaves rewove rewoven reweaved
inweave inweaves inwove inwoven inweaved
unweave unweaves unwove unwoven


For what it's worth, INTERWEAVE also has all five forms. It would be nice if there was some pass through the dictionary to edit it for consistency. (units of measure could really benefit from such an edit. For example, I use MEGABASE* on a daily basis but only KILOBASE is good). Is there some reason unweaved shouldn't be good but the other forms should that I'm unaware of? Anyways, I also missed the one playable bingo UNsaVED because I didn't know FELTING took an S hook.

I missed several other bingos I should have seen and made decisions that either resulted in a loss (or should have) in most of my games. I ended up 4-3 +184 which should result in a couple of lost rating points. Though I'd like to consider myself a better player, it's hard to argue with my 1320-ish rating when all four tournaments I've played in have given me a rating within 25 points of 1300. Hopefully I'll improve some by next spring. And now the bingo lists...


My Bingos:
GA(U)NTEST
PROUD(E)St
IONIUMS
COPa(R)ENT
ARENOSE
RECLINE(S)
JANGLES
NUTTIEr
SaVAGED


Theirs:
NARROWs
DETRAIN
(B)ARTENDS
DOGEARS
(R)IGOROUS
DeCORAT(E)
SALtERN
(T)RAILING