up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2005 through August, 2006.
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 23 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-05 through Aug-06 season. In this season, individuals played 6058 games, and so there were 3029 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 380. These numbers were 6720, 3360, and 375 for the previous season. It is likely the new words in the OWL2 contributed to the higher average.
Of the 6058 individual games, 5602 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 380 for the season. These numbers were 6321 and 374 for the previous season.
Average attendance thoughout the season was 26, and with 52 sessions. These statistics indicate that each player plays on the average of 4 1/2 games per session. We realize this is higher than in many other clubs, and so some of this club's achievements in one season should be understood in this context.
155 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. During the 2005-2006 season there were 52 active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 21, ordered by decreasing club average rating:
Jere Mead - averaged 431, won 34 of 42 games Merrill Kaitz - 408 19 27 Aaron Bader - 416 28 40 Richard Buck - 421 153 215 Mike Wolfberg - 414 190 284, scoring 117,677 points John Van Pelt - 420 18 27 Steven Saul - 401 123 206 Rich Reiben - 389 10 20 Mark Fidler - 388 115 189 Joel Horn - 410 140 205 Jamie Ryan - 411 188 279, scoring 114,731 points Arnie Horowitz - 387 37 71 Jesse Day - 434 45 57 Carl Durdan - 401 104 153 Elaine Patterson - 387 58 95 Bruce Adams - 394 113 182 Kate Fukawa-Connelly - 388 45 76 Ben Harrison - 400 120 192 Ben Greenwood - 396 23 41 Jake Bergmann - 399 72 102 Judy Horn - 398 142 252, scoring 100,328 points Also of note: Trx. Kt. played 349 games and scored 117,590 points. These high-rated players attended our club more than once, but failed to play the minimum of twenty games to qualify to be considered as active: Jason Katz-Brown, Cecilia Le, Rod MacNeil, Joey Mallick, Marsh Richards. Season Average Ratings of the Top 50 Players who Played at Least 20 Games ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1802.89 Jere Mead 1664.70 Tim Wilkinson 1771.75 Merrill Kaitz 1654.19 Chris Kulig 1758.03 Aaron Bader 1644.31 Myron Feld 1738.28 Richard Buck 1644.18 Ellen Miller 1729.90 Mike Wolfberg 1639.47 Larry Katz 1728.23 John Van Pelt 1635.97 Diana Spiller 1723.09 Steven Saul 1622.43 Marshall Finn 1718.26 Rich Reiben 1615.15 Chris Sinacola 1717.20 Mark Fidler 1606.22 Linda Giovinazzo 1715.72 Joel Horn 1604.35 Brad Whitmarsh 1714.75 Jamie Ryan 1603.39 John Cheras 1712.02 Arnie Horowitz 1601.06 Stephen Graham 1711.71 Jesse Day 1599.96 Jackie Prince 1708.44 Carl Durdan 1589.86 Emmanuel Aronie 1706.89 Elaine Patterson 1586.52 Michael Cresta 1703.87 Bruce Adams 1582.07 Tim Lutts 1698.87 Kate Fukawa-Connelly 1575.12 Trx. Kt. 1698.14 Ben Harrison 1574.22 Marek Janota-Bzowski 1695.08 Ben Greenwood 1571.53 Danny Moraff 1694.31 Jake Bergmann 1562.81 Judy Cole 1681.41 Judy Horn 1550.44 Betsey Wood 1675.88 Joev Dubach 1549.92 Hilda Siegel 1669.92 Bob Becker 1538.31 Catherine Day 1668.72 Seth Lipkin 1532.92 Wayne Yorra 1665.64 Barbara Revkin 1493.36 Claudia Cassel
There are many notable achievements this season:
The club's web site continues to be at http://wolfberg.net/scrabble/lexington, and it is also reachable using the shorter http://LSC.wolfberg.net. You can also click on the "Clubs" box at http://ScrabbleClub.com to get there.
We usually have about 4-8 players in the top 100 rated tournament players in North America, based on the National Scrabble® Association (NSA) ratings. Our club roster lists NSA ratings of active players; these are updated a few times each year.
Several of our club members are active at the web-based Internet Scrabble® Club. Our club roster includes ISC handles for many of these folks.
The club has continued to use the WHAT program on one or two laptop computers available to all players at the club. Players tend to handle their own challenges using the program, and they often check on racks, etc. after a game is completed to see what was possible. Since WHAT can provide definitions, this is an efficient method of doing postmortems.
The club began a 4-week transition period starting on 16-Feb-06 to begin to use the OWL2 lexicon in club play. During those four weeks, players were permitted to look at the list of words of length 2 through 8 which were added and deleted by the update. As usual, the WHAT program was used to handle challenges, but it was set in "Lexicon Transition Challenge" mode in which there was no penalty for challenging a play where all the words were added or deleted ones.
The highest game score in a club session during this season was 628 by Jamie Ryan. The runner-up position was tied by Richard Buck and Judy Horn, who scored 602. These were the only games in the 600's during this season. The club record for high game is 709.
Trx. Kt. played the most games during the season, with 349 games. Last season she played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 190 wins, Mike Wolfberg had the most wins, and the runner-up was Jamie Ryan with 188 wins. Jamie broke the club record for the most wins with 222 wins in the previous season, when Mike was the runner-up with 207 wins.
With a total of 117,677 points, Mike Wolfberg scored the most points in this season, and Trx. Kt. was an exceedingly close runner-up with 117,590 points. Jamie Ryan set the club record in the previous season With a total of 138,892 points.
Wayne Yorra had the highest percentage above average when he scored 533 points in a game on 9-Feb-06. His percentage above average was 63.7%. The runner-up position was shared by Jamie Ryan (scoring 628) and Judy Horn (scoring 602) with 52.6%. We have tracked this statistic only since the 1997-1998 season, and the club record is 80.6%.
Chris Guilbert attended the club only once in this season and played a 6-bingo game with these: FLUIDITy, ARGUFiES, ODONATE, EBONIZES, HEAUMES, and ANKERITE. He tied the club record set by Adam Logan about 10 years earlier. Joel Horn played two 5-bingo games during the season.
The highest loss during this season was Jamie Ryan's 473 (to Jake Bergmann's 496). This was the sixth highest losing score in this club's history. The runner-up high loss was also by Jamie when he lost to Trx. Kt. 461-452. The highest losing score for the club was 500, set in the previous season.
The highest tie of the season was 411-411 by Linda Giovinazzo and Marek Janota-Bzowski. The club record is 462-462.
This is not a statistic noticed in previous years, but there was an unusual streak of ties in this club such that there was at least one tied game in 7 consectutive weeks. In two of those weeks, there were 2 ties. In the week the streak ended there was a game where the scores differed by one point. There were 3 other ties during the season, making a total of 12 ties. There were only 7 ties in the entire previous season of the club.
Judy Horn scored 275 points for nONEQuAL. The club record is 293 points, and this is the second-highest high score for a bingo played in this club. The runner-up high bingo play for the season was also by Judy; she played sTICKMAN for 185 points.
Jack Niles made a 98-point non-bingo of QADI. The club record is 109. Runner-up plays during the season were for 90 points by Mike Wolfberg and Joel Horn.
Trx. Kt. made a 6-letter overlap on her first play. Jamie Ryan opened the game with HOWBEiT, and Trx. replied with a 6-letter overlap parallel play of the recently turned-acceptable REALTOr beginning under the O. We believe the club record is a 7-letter overlap set in 1980, but we do not recall the specific words.
Trx. Kt. defeated Wayne Yorra 180-170, which is the lowest win we recall in this club. The game was terminated early when there were six consecutive plays scoring zero.
On 29-Jun-06, with 33 players in attendance, there were 12 games in which the winner exceeded 500: Mike Wolfberg (573, 516, 516), John Cheras (548), Elaine Patterson (540), Jesse Day (523), Joel Horn (520), Richard Buck (517, 512), Jamie Ryan (508), Bruce Adams (505), Seth Lipkin(501). This was the third time in the club's history when there were 12 games in which the winner scored at least 500.
On 2-Mar-05, 8 games were played in which the loser (or tied player) exceeded 400: Wayne Yorra 425 (to Mike Wolfberg's 454), Bob Becker 412 (to Ben Harrison's 527, Judy Horn 410 (to Jack Niles's 433), Arnie Horowitz 409 (to Jake Bergmann's 413), Larry Katz 404 (to Michael Cresta's 417), Carl Durdan 401 (to Ben Harrison's 427), Marek Janota-Bzowski 404 (to Jamie Ryan's 404), Joel Horn 400 (to Tim Wilkinson's 451). The club record was broken by this accomplishment.
There was one instance of a word of more than 9 letters seen on a board during this season. This was when Jesse Day hooked INULASE onto Brad Whitmarsh's 9-letter OVeRSHIRT (made through HI). We do not recall any other words played during this season of length longer than 9. If this did happen, we did not make a note of it. The club record for the longest played word is 11 letters, and this happened 6 times over the years.
The highest attendance during this season was 37 players. The average attendance was 26, down 2 from the previous season. The club's record attendance is 44 set two seasons ago.
About twenty of our regular club players attended the U.S. Scrabble® Open Championship tournament in Phoenix, AZ in August, 2006.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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