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Lexington Scrabble® Club 2001-2002 Season

This reports on the season which ran from September, 2001 through August, 2002.

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, which is situated on Lexington Green behind the Lexington Minuteman Statue. Judy Horn has been directing this club for about 18 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.

In this season, individuals played 4530 games, and so there were 2265 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 373. These numbers were 4108, 2054, and 375 for the previous season.

Of the 4530 individual games, 4281 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 374 for the season. These numbers were 3796 and 376 for the previous season.

These are the top 16 active players in decreasing club average rating:


  Jere Mead         - averaged 407, and won  15 of  25 games
  Joey Mallick      - averaged 424, and won  35 of  49 games
  Rod MacNeil       - averaged 433, and won  15 of  20 games
  Richard Buck      - averaged 411, and won 100 of 136 games
  Mike Wolfberg     - averaged 415, and won 115 of 165 games
  Dean Cullen       - averaged 417, and won  86 of 121 games
  Steven Saul       - averaged 409, and won 123 of 189 games
  Joel Horn         - averaged 407, and won 157 of 227 games
  John Van Pelt     - averaged 406, and won  80 of 116 games
  Mark Fidler
  Chris Guilbert
  Arnie Horowitz
  Bruce Adams
  Judy Horn         - won 159 of 263 games, totalled 104,940 points
  Ben Loiterstein
  Elaine Patterson


2001-2002 Season Average Ratings of Those who Played at Least 20 Games
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    1785.81    Jere Mead                1625.01    Glenn McDonald     
  - 1773.92    Joey Mallick           + 1624.88    Barbara Revkin     
  + 1771.56    Rod MacNeil              1623.09    Pete Galea	      
  + 1770.82    Richard Buck           + 1619.77    Diana Spiller      
  - 1754.91    Mike Wolfberg          + 1608.43    Sherrie Saint John 
  + 1753.90    Dean Cullen            + 1593.84    Leland Fidler      
  = 1751.15    Steven Saul              1586.31    Bob England	      
  - 1742.67    Joel Horn                1580.57    Jackie Prince      
  + 1731.31    John Van Pelt            1580.28    Jill Heffner	      
  + 1729.54    Mark Fidler              1578.23    Edgar Thomas	      
  - 1729.16    Chris Guilbert         + 1564.36    Ron Mignery	      
  - 1727.23    Arnie Horowitz         - 1544.57    Hilda Siegel	      
  - 1725.35    Bruce Adams              1539.68    Renate Bachmann    
  + 1717.24    Judy Horn              + 1528.95    Brenda Romanos     
  - 1715.16    Ben Loiterstein          1526.07    Chris Mather	      
  - 1709.26    Elaine Patterson       + 1525.13    Skott Klebe	      
  = 1685.14    Gerri Martin             1520.63    Carl Durdan	      
  + 1676.60    Gina Fassio            + 1517.72    Jonathan Ellis     
  - 1668.78    Gregg Foster             1517.05    Sharon McWilliams  
  - 1665.11    Ellen Miller             1506.54    Myron Feld	      
    1643.37    Nora Tolins              1486.41    Deborah Fryer      
  + 1642.88    Thomas Stumpf            1472.86    Linda Giovinazzo   
    1641.40    Jake Bergmann            1435.89    Trx. Kt.
  - 1631.21    Marshall Finn            1423.41    Tim Lutts	      
  - 1629.54    Pat Hennessy             1309.74    Tom Hart           

The =,+,- compare 4-digit club ratings with the previous season, including an arbitrary artificial boost of 20 points.

In this season, the highest game score was 703 by Joel Horn. The second-highest game this season was a 591 by Dean Cullen. The club record is 709 by Mike Wolfberg in 1982.

The highest losing score for the season was Gerri Martin's 459; the winner of that game was Ellen Miller, with a 475. The club record is 480 by Merrill Kaitz, losing to Mike Wolfberg's 493 in 1989.

The highest total points in a game for this season was 991: Rod MacNeil defeated Joel Horn 568-423. Interestingly, in that game Rod played both ONERIEST and SEROTINE (which are anagrams) as natural bingos. The club record for high total points is 1062, when Steve Root defeated Jere Mead 677-385 several years ago.

On 11-Apr-02, Elaine Patterson made the highest-scoring bingo of this season, which was AGONIZED for 212 points. The club record is 293 points by Steve Root several years ago.

On 16-May-02, Richard Buck made the club's second-highest remembered non-bingo for 103 points. Arnie Horowitz set the high non-bingo record the previous season with a 109.

On three different club sessions this season there were 8 games in which the winner exceeded 500. We will not report all the details. The record for our club is 9 such games set in 1998.

On 16-May-02, Mike Wolfberg tied his own club record set in 2000 of the most bingos played in a row - the number was 4. In that 16-May-02 game, Mike's opponent, Chris Guilbert played 3 more bingos.

We did not notice any particularly high number of bingos by one player in a game this season. The club record is 6 set by Adam Logan in 1996.

On 4-Apr-02 the club's attendance record was set with 36 players, including 6 new ones. On 25-Jul-02 there were 34 players, with 1 new one. The record attendance before this season was 27 players, set the previous season.

Further details for some of the games 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.