up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2006 through August, 2007.
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-06 through Aug-07 season. In this season, individuals played 7504 games, and so there were 3752 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 386. These numbers were 6058, 3029, and 380 for the previous season. Two seasons ago the club average was 11 points less. It is likely the new words in the OWL2 contributed to the increases in the average.
Of the 7504 individual games, 7112 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 385 for the season. These numbers were 5602 and 380 for the previous season.
Average attendance thoughout the season was 30.2, and with 51 sessions. These statistics indicate that each player plays on the average of almost 5 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. The average attendance in the previous season was 26.
169 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. During the 2006-2007 season there were 55 active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 27, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :
John O'Laughlin - averaged 448, won 28 of 41 games Jere Mead - 423 18 27 Rod MacNeil - 428 154 206 Jesse Day - 439 48 62 Aaron Bader - 438 28 38 Merrill Kaitz - 417 21 34 Richard Buck - 429 151 205 Cecilia Le - 409 116 186 Steven Saul - 411 130 191 Mike Wolfberg - 419 213 304, scoring 127,518 points Jamie Ryan - 427 255 381, scoring 162,744 points Seth Lipkin - 426 74 103 Joel Horn - 416 164 244, scoring 101,587 points Arnie Horowitz - 387 18 29 Bruce Adams - 403 134 200 Ben Harrison - 416 212 321, scoring 133,510 points Carl Durdan - 401 54 92 Mark Fidler - 391 110 190 Elaine Patterson - 373 22 43 Kate Fukawa-Connelly - 406 81 132 Jake Bergmann - 403 55 95 Brad Whitmarsh - 402 162 295, scoring 118,693 points Ben Greenwood - 394 10 22 Joev Dubach - 385 40 71 Barbara Revkin - 405 60 95 Bob Becker - 391 109 221 Judy Horn - 398 142 252, scoring 119,085 points Also of note: Trx. Kt. played 390 games and scored 132,044 points. These high-rated players attended our club during the season, but failed to play the minimum of twenty games to qualify to be considered as active: Ian Weinstein, Joey Mallick, John Van Pelt, Alyssa Faria, Elana Lehrer, Steve Root, Brendan Sullivan, Kurt Davies, Rich Reiben, James Leong, Samantha Southard. Season Average Ratings of the Top 50 Players who Played at Least 20 Games ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1795.54 John O'Laughlin 1684.74 Bob Becker 1785.34 Jere Mead 1683.79 Judy Horn 1784.67 Rod MacNeil 1682.12 Leigh Bernstein 1783.44 Jesse Day 1680.11 Thomas Stumpf 1776.56 Aaron Bader 1677.60 Chris Sinacola 1775.98 Merrill Kaitz 1677.15 Tim Wilkinson 1754.59 Richard Buck 1659.70 Larry Katz 1750.13 Cecilia Le 1656.98 Diana Spiller 1747.87 Steven Saul 1652.98 John Cheras 1742.14 Mike Wolfberg 1647.34 Ellen Miller 1740.64 Jamie Ryan 1629.67 Linda Giovinazzo 1737.61 Seth Lipkin 1627.43 Marshall Finn 1736.03 Joel Horn 1605.47 Tim Lutts 1732.32 Arnie Horowitz 1598.03 Judy Cole 1730.16 Bruce Adams 1595.67 Michael Cresta 1728.03 Ben Harrison 1598.03 Judy Cole 1721.29 Carl Durdan 1574.83 Betsey Wood 1716.01 Mark Fidler 1572.24 Trx. Kt. 1711.40 Elaine Patterson 1566.34 Rob Wilstein 1709.47 Kate Fukawa-Connelly 1547.09 Catherine Day 1709.07 Jake Bergmann 1535.57 Hilda Siegel 1699.32 Brad Whitmarsh 1531.08 Kirby Gordon 1693.05 Ben Greenwood 1526.52 Wayne Yorra 1690.99 Joev Dubach 1505.03 Norma Marshall 1689.99 Barbara Revkin 1434.74 Crystal Lyons
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 6-10 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 highest game score in a club session during this season was 830 by Michael Cresta. This game broke both club records and records in North American Scrabble®. The losing score by Wayne Yorra was 490, and so their total was 1320.
The runner-up high game score last season was a 737 by Mike Wolfberg. Other over-600 games: Brad Whitmarsh 652, Jesse Day 644, Joel Horn 621,612,609, Mike Wolfberg 616, Rod MacNeil 614, Jamie Ryan 612,609.
Trx. Kt. played the most games during the season, with 390 games, which is higher than her last season's number. Two seasons ago she played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season. Jamie Ryan played 381 games during the season.
With 255 wins, Jamie had the most wins, and this broke the previous club record set by Jamie at 222 two seasons ago. Mike Wolfberg had 213 wins, and Ben Harrison had just one less.
With a total of 162,744 points, Jamie Ryan scored the most points in this season, breaking his record of 138,892 set two seasons ago. Ben Harrison scored 133,510 points, and Trx. Kt. scored 132,044 points.
In order to qualify for the highest percentage above average accolade, you must have already played at least 20 games in the season, and Michael Cresta's high game was not eligible. The highest such game which did count was Mike Wolfberg's 737, and that was 76.1% above his average. The runner-up was Aron Klopper with a 62.2% game.
For the first time in club history, the high-above-average score was achieved by a losing score, and this was by Wayne Yorra when he lost with a 490 to Michael Cresta's 830. As stated above, Michael had not played enough games in the season to be eligible for the accolade. We have tracked this statistic only since the 1997-1998 season, and the club record is 80.6%.Joel Horn played a 6-bingo game and also a 5-bingo game during the season. Joel and Diana Spiller played a total of 8 in a game they played together. Joel played 5 of these bingos and lost.
The highest loss during this season was Wayne Yorra's 490 (to Michael Cresta's 830). This was the second highest losing score in this club's history. The highest losing score for the club was 500, set two seasons ago.
During this season, we started to notice high numbers of players with a club rating of at least 1700, and there were 28 such players on 26-Jul-07.
Michael Cresta scored 365 points for QUIXOTRY. In the same game, he scored 239 for FLATFISH. His 365-pointer is now the club record, and the other bingo is the club's fourth highest bingo score to date.
Mike Wolfberg scored the second-highest non-bingo in club history with a 106-point play. Bruce Adams played a 103-point non-bingo. Arnie Horowitz made a 102-point non-bingo; he holds the club record with a 109-point non-bingo played in 2001.
In a game which went to completion between two of our experienced players, the score was 279-262. The lowest win in this club's history was in a game terminated early when there were six consecutive plays scoring zero.
On 21-Jun-07, with 35 players in attendance, there were 18 games in which the winner exceeded 500, breaking the club previous club of 14 such games (also first seen in this season). About one month later there was a session with 16 such games.
This statistic used to be just 8, but that was exceeded several times during this season. The highest number of high losses was 12 when club attendance was only 27. In other sessions in the season there were 11, 10, 9, and 9 high losses.
The new club record was set with a high total of 1320 when Michael Cresta defeated Wayne Yorra 830-490. A new runner-up record was also set this season with a 1077 point total when Mike Wolfberg defeated Jamie Ryan 737-340. Other high totals in this season are 1033, 1021, 1001, and 1000. These are all among the top 8 such games in club history.
On 22-Mar-07, when attendance was 33, there were 7 games in which the total exceeded 900. About one month earlier, there were 5 such games. We believe these both to be records.
The highest attendance during this season was 40 players. The average attendance was 30, up 4 from the previous season. The club's record attendance is 44 set three seasons ago.
On 9-Nov-06, In a game between Elaine Patterson and Hilda Siegel, part of the board looked like:
G A Y B A B H D A Y O M E N O M E N U A LIs seemed most unusual to see the same word just above itself. Hilda played ANNUAL, Elaine played DEE, Hilda played MM, Elaine played YAHOO.
About twenty of our regular club players attended the 2007 Players Championship in Dayton, OH in August, 2007. In Divison A: Aaron Bader placed 23rd, John O'Laughlin was 26th, and Rod MacNeil was 30th. Ben Harrison won Division B. Mike Wolfberg placed 3rd in Division C.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
back to the top of this page | This page, maintained by Mike Wolfberg, was last updated on December 14, 2012. |