12-8 got me just out of the money. D’oh! It was as fun as usual though. I was in the driver's seat for at least 4 of my losses (they were mine to win at some point), only two blowout losses where it was mostly out of my hands. I got to play greatscott66 for the first time. I bingoed* out to lose by 1 (recount-confirmed)-a real nail-biter. He had me on the ropes most of the game, though. 

 

Socialism: getting to meet

srockhop

tolarjev

For my buds who aren't already on FaceBook, you may want to be alerted to a couple of photo albums I just posted.  I find uploading photos to there much easier than here.  Here's one for the foodies:



Enter the organic wonderland

For interested scrabblers, I will be bringing some sort of prize package to my next NE tourney.

lomakgneip

scrabblephreak

Next up:  my lowest equity-loss game and another that has more interesting choices.

If you ask umpteen scrabblers about when to play phonies, you will get umpteen answers.  It seems everyone has their own pet isothere about Who Plays More Phonies and Which Phonies Experts Will/Won’t Accept.  Is it axiomatic that the more words one knows and sees, the less one needs to phony? 

There are also quite a number of theories regarding what behavior annotation induces.  Do Table 1 players perform more cautiously, knowing the sting of their peers’ rebuke can be painful, or can they anticipate that that's what their OPP. would think they would do, and therefore exploit that (mis)conception?   

Do some of us look for phonies the same way NASCAR fans watch for crashes?  (Maybe.  There are certainly some who dismiss all fandom of phonies the same way I consider NASCAR to be Makin’ A Left TV) As an attempt to perform a bit of anecdotal analysis (if that’s not too oxymoronic) I remotely observed a bunch of plays at the DO. 

I also found some phonies that were un-*ed originally (so readers cannot blame the overworked Sherrie for the phony they may toss up at some point).  I assume that most of the phonies (but not all) are simple typos.  Thank you to Sherrie St John for comments, Dee Segrest and Kate Watson for annotation, and John Chew for the Tsh action. 

All games can be found in their varying degree of glory at http://www.dallasopen.com/games/2009/.  Some scrabblers undoubtedly prefer these phonies to only be considered in their proper contexts.  Sometimes phonies don’t have the flash that some of the real words played like VICUGNAS, RE(GELATING) and (QUAYS)IDES do, but they sometimes decide a game.  Ratings are from the beginning of the tourney. For our fans of the octothorp I have checked the Collins list for all of these.  Please let me know if I’ve missed anything or send me your challenge table from the DO! 

DO Board 1

Round 1: ANEALED*, DUNITER*, GONERAL*

Round 7:  EVANSIONS*

Round 10: PREMA?ES* (no letter works), PENSATE*, STIPIULE*

Round 12: GRUTTENS*

Round 15: KIERETSU*, TOWNEYS*

Interesting result/item:

The person who put down the greatest number of phony bingos on board one happened to win the whole thing. 

Quality adversaries: both Jason Keller and Judy Horn beat my twice, but I beat Judy in a third game. (Both of the losses to Judy were wins I gave away in the last move, tragically.) While it looks like the 1500 mark is still elusive to him, Jason is still underrated. Bravo, he of the orange pants! You were my worthiest opp.!

(P.S. although Kevin G. is not known by the moniker, by sheer thriftiness and age I will wager he has owned his for 5 years longer or so.  He is the sort of person who might tell you exactly what day it was (15 years ago?) and what the weather was.)

To follow: lowest equity losses and wins.

Equity: I gave away an average of 113, which I'm not proud of, but my three best were 42, 50, and 62

In summary: my 6th-place-just-out-of-money performance is becoming all too common. I will definitely break 1500 in Albany.  Sound-scape @ Any Burd:  often very noisy, bizarre incidents post to follow.