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Director: Elana Simons, 054 220 6238, elanalibby@gmail.com
THIS WEEK AT THE CLUB
Season 85, Week 16 of 25 – July 14, 2026
In summertime the livin’ may be easy, but Scrabble numbers often suffer… and with members away on vacation or otherwise occupied, registration for next week’s Summer Tournament has fallen below the required minimum. So, “with regret,” Peta has canceled Sunday’s tournament, but promises “to try again for another date that might work better.”
An unlucky fall necessitating surgery and an arm in a cumbersome cast didn’t stop Rena from returning to the club, where she was warmly welcomed.
Rita: “Richard went out with such a beautiful word – DIURNAL – that I didn’t even mind losing!” [It means active during the daytime.] In her game against Steve, Wendy “did something I have always wanted to do: add EPI- to ZOA – and in the three squares away from the triple.” [It’s the plural of EPIZOON, the name for parasites such as fleas, lice or ticks.] Richard pluralized ICK in order to place a bingo and was immediately challenged but proved correct, to Judy’s chagrin. As well as an expression of disgust, it is apparently British slang for a minor illness.
Reported Brenda, ruefully, “I was beating Wendy the whole game… until, at the very end, she played ICECAVES [through an E on the board and the second C a blank]. It’s no good and I challenged it off – but she then put an S on my YUAN to make VARICES on a triple, and won.” What made it so frustrating, lamented Brenda, “was that I knew what her letters were and could have done so many other things… I gave that game to her.” The balm for the errors we make is surely the knowledge that there’s always another week, another game.
Most of us have been there: sitting glum but resigned over a board that got blocked without either player really aiming for that. Bingo after bingo appearing on our racks – and nowhere to put them. Hardly anywhere, in fact, to play anything substantial. A game that eventually results in a winner – but not much satisfaction, or fun. Yet a player may aim to close down the board as a matter of strategy. Is this a good thing to do? And if so, when?
Closing down the board, it’s generally held, is a defensive move used to protect your lead when you are ahead in the game by preventing an opponent from playing high-scoring words or bingos, and experienced players will employ that tactic. Dahlia, a canny Division A player, shares some reflections:
“In general, my inclination is always to keep the board open as long as possible simply because it’s more fun that way. And as competitive, strategic and tactical I may be as a player, the only time I will make the effort to solidly close down the board to the extent possible is if I have a fair lead over a player who’s much stronger than me, and there are still power tiles out, and S’s, and blanks. Otherwise I will leave the board open as long as I can. Look, it often may backfire; you could call it 50 percent either way – i.e., whether leaving the board open will help or hurt me – but for the sake of a good game I’m happy to rely on the 50 percent odds that things will go my way, and leave the board open for creative moves.”
Adds DavidS: “I missed one of the most obvious ways of winning an endgame – blocking your opponent’s out play – so Steve won by one point. I missed blocking his only out, and lost with ES plus two blanks on my rack. That’s insane. You can play a million games, and that would never happen.”
One player who didn’t know VAIR hesitated to add an S to it, prompting this footnote to an archaic word for a squirrel fur highly prized in the Middle Ages for trimming and lining garments. It answers a baffling question: Did Cinderella really wear glass slippers to the ball? Common sense says she couldn’t have… and yet it’s in the story. Though scholars differ on this, translating from one language to another supplies a clue. When the Cinderella story came into English from the French, it may well be that VAIR was carelessly read as VERRE, meaning glass; which is how “fur slippers” ended up as “glass slippers.”
If you missed the opportunity to communicate your hilite in person at the club you can email it to judymo@netvision.net.il or WhatsApp it (054-5552355) up until noon the following day. If you wish to mark any occasion by bringing refreshments to the club, please check with Susan up to a week in advance.
WWW: Wendy, Steve
WOW: GHERAOED, INURBANE (DavidS), NARCOSES (Jonathan)
PHOW:
High Win, High Loss, High Triple:
A: 498 (Wendy), 388 (Liran), 1346 (Wendy)
B1: 506 (Judy), 357 (Brenda), 1181 (Judy)
Scores over 500: 506 (Judy)
100-pt play:
Attendance: 18