up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2012 through August, 2013.
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 26 years. Judy Cole 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 which 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 September 2012 through August 2013 season. In this season, individuals played 4048 games, and so there were 2024 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 385. These numbers were 4924, 2462, and 386 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 386.
Of the 4048 individual games, 3757 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 383 for the season. These numbers were 4608 and 384 for the previous season.
There were 50 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 20.1, down 2.2 from the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 4.0 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.
111 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. This is down from 126 players announced one year ago. During the 2012-2013 season there were 40 (down from 42 the previous season) active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 30, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :
Evans Clinchy - averaged 449, won 17 of 21 games
Ben Harrison - averaged 421, won 20 of 27 games
Richard Buck - averaged 429, won 82 of 118 games
Sinna Vijayakumar - averaged 438, won 19 of 24 games
Merrill Kaitz - averaged 403, won 22 of 27 games
Steven Saul - averaged 422, won 104 of 150 games
Jake Bergmann - averaged 412, won 81 of 118 games
Joel Horn - averaged 416, won 187 of 276 games, scored 114,900 points
Morris Greenberg - averaged 412, won 13 of 21 games
Mark Fidler - averaged 406, won 96 of 142 games
Bob Becker - averaged 402, won 54 of 81 games
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 414, won 112 of 176 games
Wes Eddings - averaged 396, won 56 of 83 games
Rebecca Lambert - averaged 411, won 35 of 50 games
Judy Horn - averaged 397, won 154 of 262 games, scored 104,077 points
Carol McDonald - averaged 400, won 106 of 169 games
Larry Katz - averaged 390, won 93 of 169 games
Judy Cole - averaged 382, won 23 of 39 games
Chris Kulig - averaged 391, won 112 of 224 games, scored 87,657 points
Susan Kirchhausen - averaged 370, won 14 of 30 games
Tim Lutts - averaged 376, won 27 of 60 games
Diana Spiller - averaged 379, won 37 of 80 games
Marvin Kraus - averaged 370, won 62 of 163 games
Cathy Suehisa - averaged 364, won 14 of 36 games
Betsey Wood - averaged 366, won 29 of 76 games
Marshall Finn - averaged 341, won 8 of 25 games
Wayne Yorra - averaged 367, won 38 of 83 games
Trx. Kt. - averaged 347, won 57 of 185 games
Bob Lichtenstein - averaged 361, won 10 of 23 games
Linda Giovinazzo - averaged 356, won 39 of 98 games
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:
John Cheras, Chris Cree, Jesse Day, Carl Durdan, Arnie Horowitz, Seth Lipkin,
Jere Mead, Cheryl Melvin, Barbara Revkin, Jon Shreve, Chris Sinacola,
Ian Weinstein, Brad Whitmarsh.
Season Average Ratings of the Top 40 Active Players
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1810.15 Evans Clinchy 1661.97 Tim Lutts
1770.34 Ben Harrison 1636.72 Diana Spiller
1765.89 Richard Buck 1636.37 Marvin Kraus
1755.30 Sinna Vijayakumar 1623.98 Cathy Suehisa
1753.52 Merrill Kaitz 1616.49 Betsey Wood
1747.05 Steven Saul 1613.77 Marshall Finn
1742.62 Jake Bergmann 1612.69 Wayne Yorra
1739.58 Joel Horn 1606.65 Trx. Kt.
1738.72 Morris Greenberg 1603.96 Bob Lichtenstein
1738.17 Mark Fidler 1601.81 Linda Giovinazzo
1732.73 Bob Becker 1601.72 Claudia Cassel
1730.14 Mike Wolfberg 1574.06 Marc Goldstein
1724.10 Wes Eddings 1567.85 Steven Gonzales
1707.91 Rebecca Lambert 1566.47 Catherine Day
1700.80 Judy Horn 1540.21 Marek Janota-Bzowski
1700.17 Carol McDonald 1509.99 James Krycka
1698.43 Larry Katz 1504.92 Norma Marshall
1691.47 Judy Cole 1501.58 Devon Terpening
1690.44 Chris Kulig 1469.56 Janet Bersani
1682.87 Susan Kirchhausen 1427.01 Mark Jones
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.
This club started keeping statistics for games played using the Collins lexicon for the 2011-2012 season. A Collins-specific weekly stats report is now issued by email and posted on the club web site even when there were no Collins games played. The weekly news includes challenged and considered words in OWL2 games and Collins games (if any), and the acceptable words shown are based on the CSW2012 Lexicon. Collins games were played on 29 evenings during the season and on 38 evenings during the previous season.
In this season individuals played 146 Collins games, and so there were 73 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 425. These numbers in the previous season were: 256, 128, 420.
These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2012-2013 season:
1760.66 Richard Buck 1739.27 Rebecca Lambert
We usually have about 4-8 players in the top 100 rated tournament players in North America, based on the North American Scrabble® Players Association (NASPA) ratings. NASPA took over the from the National Scrabble® Association (NSA) in July, 2009. Our club roster lists NASPA 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 713 by Joel Horn. This was the 3rd highest score ever achieved in the Lexington Club. The game is detailed here.
Other games above 599 were: Mike Wolfberg 676, Wes Eddings 623, Richard Buck 617, Brad Whitmarsh 616, Joel Horn 613, Carol McDonald 607, Steven Saul 606, Chris Kulig 601, Mike Wolfberg 601.
Joel Horn played 276 games, which is 45 lower than his previous season's number. Judy Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 262 games, which is 43 lower than her previous season's number. Eight seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 187 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 154 wins by Judy Horn. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 215.
With a total of 114,900 points, Joel Horn scored the most points in this season, down from 127,148 in the previous season. Judy Horn scored 104,077 points. In the previous season Judy scored 127,238 points.
In order to qualify for the highest percentage above average accolade, you must have already played at least 20 games in the season. The highest such game was Joel Horn's 713, and that was 71.0% above his average. Runners up were Mike Wolfberg with 62.5% and Wes Eddings with 60.2%
There were no 6-bingo games played in the season. Joel Horn had a game in which he bingoed on four sequential turns.
There was a 7-bingo game played in the season. Marc Goldstein played 4 bingos and Trx. Kt. played 3 bingos in a game on 6-Dec-12.
The highest loss during this season was Marc Goldstein's 484 (to Trx. Kt.'s 504).
Although high point spreads have not been tracked, there were two unusual ones this season: Joel defeated his opponent by 494 in the highest-scoring game of the season - the score was 713-219; Mike Wolfberg defeated his opponent with a spread of 465 - the score was 601-136.
The thirteenth-highest total in this club was 1006 in a game on 13-Dec-12, in which Mike Wolfberg defeated Diana Spiller 676-330. It had the highest total score of 1006 for the current season.
Joel Horn played a 221-point CAJEPuTS in the 2012-2013 season, and the runners-up were Marc Goldstein's 167-point GErMINAL and Chris Kulig's 158-point BEDROLLS.
During the 2012-2013 season the highest non-bingo was made by Mike Wolfberg. He scored 133 points for sEQUELA on a TWS and the Q was on a DLS; the blank s hooked to ARAK. In October, 2010, Jamie Ryan made a 144-point non-bingo, which became the club's highest over its history.
Joel Horn made the 11-letter PROFITEROLe at O1 by adding ITEROLe for 95 points. This was Joel's first 11-letter bingo ever, and it is the second time an 11-letter bingo has been played in this club. A few 11-letter words have been played over the years, but now only two of these have been bingos.
Claudia Cassel made a 10-letter bingo of THUNDERERS through ERE.
The highest attendance during this season was 27 players on 15-Nov-12.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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