up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2002 through August, 2003.
The Lexington, Massachusetts Scrabble Club #108 has been running continuously since it was started by Edie Berman and Muriel Sands in January, 1980. We meet nearly every Thursday night of the year in a comfy basement meeting room of the First Parish Church, situated on Lexington Green behind the Lexington Minuteman Statue. Judy Horn has been directing this club for about 20 years. Ellen Miller serves as associate director. Mike Wolfberg joined the club within its first month of existence, and he took on the role of club statistician within the first year. The club has operated with its own rating system, designed primarily by Alan Frank, since early 1981. Ratings are based on the percentage of points each of the players scores in each game. The club web site includes a detailed description of this system.
This is a report of the highlights of this club's Sep-02 through Aug-03 season. In this season, individuals played 5184 games, and so there were 2592 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 372. These numbers were 4530, 2265, and 373 for the previous season.
Of the 5184 individual games, 4880 were played by an "active player". We define an active player as someone who played at least 20 games in the season. The average score of the active players was 372 for the season. These numbers were 4880 and 374 for the previous season.
These are the top 15 active players in decreasing club average rating:
Jere Mead - averaged 435, and won 31 of 39 games
Joey Mallick - averaged 418, and won 22 of 28 games
Rod MacNeil - averaged 423, and won 17 of 22 games
Richard Buck - averaged 419, and won 96 of 143 games
Steven Saul - averaged 405, and won 127 of 184 games
Dean Cullen - averaged 423, and won 100 of 134 games
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 419, and won 142 of 193 games
Ben Greenwood - averaged 414, and won 30 of 47 games
Mark Fidler - averaged 392, and won 128 of 190 games
Joel Horn - averaged 405, and won 165 of 239 games
John Van Pelt - averaged 407, and won 54 of 84 games
Arnie Horowitz
Elaine Patterson
Bruce Adams
Judy Horn - won 134 of 250 games, totalled 98,912 points
Season Average Ratings of the Top 50 Players who Played at Least 20 Games
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1805.98 Jere Mead 1622.70 Diana Spiller
1788.61 Joey Mallick 1618.70 Sherrie Saint John
1786.14 Rod MacNeil 1610.02 Leland Fidler
1760.13 Richard Buck 1604.64 Michele Liguori
1757.24 Steven Saul 1595.95 Carl Durdan
1756.65 Dean Cullen 1590.32 Myron Feld
1752.38 Mike Wolfberg 1583.78 Jill Heffner
1735.43 Ben Greenwood 1578.36 Brenda Romanos
1735.39 Mark Fidler 1577.37 Joev Dubach
1733.47 Joel Horn 1576.74 Sharon McWilliams
1732.41 John Van Pelt 1570.16 Jeff Jacot
1718.98 Arnie Horowitz 1563.21 Gary Reid
1715.42 Elaine Patterson 1560.53 Rick LaPointe
1702.99 Bruce Adams 1552.09 Chris Mather
1702.54 Judy Horn 1534.34 Jonathan Ellis
1689.53 Gina Fassio 1532.68 Stephen Graham
1682.92 Rich Reiben 1532.06 Linda Giovinazzo
1675.77 Thomas Stumpf 1520.25 Trx. Kt.
1670.59 Jake Bergmann 1514.58 Larry Katz
1667.71 Ellen Miller 1514.19 Tim Lutts
1653.09 Barbara Revkin 1514.16 Nicholas Cheung
1643.35 Jamie Ryan 1489.61 Michael Cresta
1642.94 Gregg Foster 1482.51 Hilda Siegel
1636.20 Marshall Finn 1467.20 Debra Truskinoff
1629.55 Julie LaPointe 1448.83 Lauren Comeau
The club's web site has recently moved, since Mike Wolfberg's web site moved. Please update any links or bookmarks you may have to any part of Mike's web site. The Lexington Club portion of his site is at http://wolfberg.net/scrabble/lexington. You can click on the "Clubs" box at http://ScrabbleClub.com to get there.
There are many notable achievements this season:
We usually have about 4-5 players in the top 100 and about 8-12 players in the top 200 in the NSA ratings.
Several of our club members are active at the web-based Internet Scrabble Club. Our club roster now includes ISC handles for many of these folks.
These were the 5 games in the 600's: Richard Buck 625, Jamie Ryan 624, Mike Wolfberg 615 and 600, Joel Horn 612. The club record is 709.
Judy Horn played 250 games during the season. The club record is 315.
Joel Horn won 165 games during the season. The club record is 175.
Judy Horn scored 98,912 season points. The club record is 111,252.
On 21-Aug-03 Michealle Larkins scored 69.1% above her average. This is the highest percentage this season. Runner-up is Lauren Comeau with 60.3%. We have tracked this statistic only since the 1997-1998 season, and the club record is 80.6%.
Joel Horn played 5 bingos in a game on 4 occasions in this season. In two of those games, Joel's first 3 plays were bingos. At one of those sessions, Steven Saul also played a 5-bingo game. Bruce Adams played a 5-bingo game during this season. The club record is 6 bingos.
1000 points is the second-highest total seen in this club. On 19-Jun-03, Mike Wolfberg defeated John Van Pelt 514-486. In that game Mike made a 149-point MARABOUS immediately followed by John's 185-point PSHAWING. This game also set a new record for the club's highest losing score. This game is annotated on the club web site. The club record is 1062.
On 26-Jun-03 Joel Horn defeated Judy Horn 483-478. This is the second highest losing score of the season and the third highest in club history. Joel played one 9-letter bingo, and Judy played 3 bingos, but many points were made using the high-scoring letters. Plays with J,Q,X,Z totaled 248 points: Joel scored 80 with the J and 78 with the Q; Judy scored 39 with the X and 51 with the Z.
On 14-Aug-03 Dean Cullen defeated Carl Durdan 518-470, thus totaling 988. This is the second highest total of the season and the fourth highest total in club history.
The highest tie of the season was 411-411 by Jill Heffner and Chris Mather on 3-Oct-02. The club record is 462-462.
As mentioned above, on 19-Jun-03 John Van Pelt made a 185-point PSHAWING. The club record is 293 points for a bingo.
On 10-Jan-03 Joel Horn made a 102-point non-bingo. The club record is 109.
On 20-Feb-03, Rick LaPointe played ADVANTAGE through the D and the third A, using a blank for the G. On 26-Jun-03 John Van Pelt played OUTSERVES from the O on the board through the second E on the board. We have not kept club records of such plays.
On 13-Feb-03, with 27 players in attendance, there were a record-breaking 10 games in which the winner exceeded 500: Jere Mead (577), Mike Wolfberg (568), Richard Buck (550 and 505), Dean Cullen (539 and 502), Elaine Patterson (527), Julie LaPointe (513 and 502), Steven Saul (501).
On 29-May-03, with 29 players at the club, 6 games (tieing the club record) were played in which the loser exceeded 400:
The same record was tied on 28-Aug-03, with 23 attendees:
Before this season the longest word seen on the board was a 10-letter word, but an 11-letter word was played on three occasions this season:
On 24-Jul-03, Joel Horn extended ABO to make the 10-letter ABOMINATES.
On 28-Aug-03, Mike Wolfberg made the 10-letter TRANQUILER from TRANQ.
On 27-Mar-03 there were a record-breaking 37 players, including 2 new ones. The average attendance during the season was 26.
On 30-Jan-03 in a game between Judy Horn and Mike Wolfberg, these 7 animals were played: PIG, EMU, NENE, ZEBU, WREN, COUGAR, RAPTOR. These were also played in that game: LIONISES, QAT, and GUL. RAPTOR has an animal anagram. We had not been keeping track of such accomplishments, so it is unknown whether this is a club record.
Joel Horn and Linda Giovinazzo played a 5-animal game on 17-Apr-03.
On 17-Jul-03, Mike Wolfberg picked the J and Jere Mead picked the K. These are the only sequential singletons among the Scrabble tiles.
On 5-Sep-02, after Trx. Kt. picked an A, Mike Wolfberg picked a blank.
The picking of blank and Z was also seen at the club a few years ago.
On 1-May-03 Tim Lutz opened with a 102-point LAZIEST at 8B. Lauren Comeau's response was CHOWING with a blank G at A2 for 143 points!
On 13-Feb-03 Dean Cullen ended a game with a zero-point play. Athough he found a 10-play elsewhere, he enjoyed making this unusual play of placing a blank next to a blank to form a 2-letter word for no points.
On 7-Aug-03 Diana Spiller challenged DIANA off the board.
Further details for some of the games mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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