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Lexington Scrabble® Club 2011-2012 Season

This reports on the season which ran from September, 2011 through August, 2012.

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 2011 through August 2012 season. In this season, individuals played 4924 games, and so there were 2462 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 386. These numbers were 5308, 2654, and 387 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 386.

Of the 4924 individual games, 4608 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 384 for the season. These numbers were 4882 and 387 for the previous season.

There were 52 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 22.3, down .5 from the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 4.2 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.

126 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. During the 2011-2012 season there were 42 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 446, won  85 of 107 games
Joel Horn         - averaged 417, won 215 of 305 games, scored 127,148 points
Ben Harrison      - averaged 425, won 197 of 273 games, scored 115,933 points
Steven Saul       - averaged 419, won 106 of 154 games
Richard Buck      - averaged 422, won 110 of 154 games
Sinna Vijayakumar - averaged 417, won  40 of  58 games
Merrill Kaitz     - averaged 418, won  51 of  75 games
Mark Fidler       - averaged 397, won 100 of 144 games
Mike Wolfberg     - averaged 411, won 123 of 196 games
Jake Bergmann     - averaged 406, won  71 of 115 games
Carl Durdan       - averaged 406, won  20 of  31 games
Bob Becker        - averaged 405, won  79 of 136 games
Morris Greenberg  - averaged 416, won  27 of  39 games
Chris Sinacola    - averaged 398, won  14 of  25 games
Judy Horn         - averaged 396, won 181 of 321 games, scored 127,238 points
Barbara Revkin    - averaged 387, won  26 of  52 games
Rebecca Lambert   - averaged 392, won  34 of  66 games
Susan Kirchhausen - averaged 378, won  16 of  30 games
Larry Katz        - averaged 385, won  81 of 165 games
Chris Kulig       - averaged 383, won 102 of 220 games
Souparno Ghosh    - averaged 383, won  38 of  76 games
Judy Cole         - averaged 383, won  41 of  83 games
Carol McDonald    - averaged 389, won  46 of  81 games
Diana Spiller     - averaged 373, won  28 of  81 games
Tim Lutts         - averaged 373, won  28 of  59 games
Marshall Finn     - averaged 359, won  15 of  37 games
Linda Giovinazzo  - averaged 364, won  44 of 121 games
Betsey Wood       - averaged 357, won  40 of 118 games
Claudia Cassel    - averaged 350, won  78 of 129 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:
Jane Conti, Jesse Day, Michael Donegan, Joev Dubach, Leland Fidler,
Aaron P. Green, Sam Heinrich, Nicole Kazarian, Scott Leifer, Seth Lipkin,
Jere Mead, Cheryl Melvin, Sam Moch, Jack Niles, Willie Pitzer, Jon Shreve,
Nick Silverman, Linda Stolow Sterling, Thomas Stumpf, Brad Whitmarsh.


           Season Average Ratings of the Top 40 Active Players
           ---------------------------------------------------
   1790.76    Evans Clinchy            1677.01    Souparno Ghosh
   1749.27    Joel Horn                1672.34    Judy Cole
   1746.37    Ben Harrison             1661.36    Carol McDonald
   1743.03    Steven Saul              1657.09    Diana Spiller
   1741.45    Richard Buck             1640.02    Tim Lutts
   1739.69    Sinna Vijayakumar        1627.84    Marshall Finn
   1737.67    Merrill Kaitz            1618.79    Linda Giovinazzo
   1735.71    Mark Fidler              1615.19    Betsey Wood
   1730.94    Mike Wolfberg            1607.32    Claudia Cassel
   1729.01    Jake Bergmann            1606.83    Trx. Kt.
   1717.94    Carl Durdan              1597.80    Wayne Yorra
   1717.57    Bob Becker               1596.74    Cathy Suehisa
   1710.88    Morris Greenberg         1591.97    Catherine Day
   1710.61    Chris Sinacola           1586.02    Marvin Kraus
   1709.68    Judy Horn                1583.57    Marla Choslovsky
   1704.16    Barbara Revkin           1578.26    Emmanuel Aronie
   1691.34    Rebecca Lambert          1547.87    Marc Goldstein
   1684.37    Susan Kirchhausen        1543.10    Norma Marshall
   1684.34    Larry Katz               1539.81    Megan McMahon
   1681.06    Chris Kulig              1511.76    Steven Gonzales

There are many notable achievements this season:

Club Web Site

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.

Collins Club Ratings

This club started keeping statistics for games played using the Collins lexicon for the 2011-2012 season. A Collins-specific weekly stats report was issued by email and posted on the club web site when there were Collins games played. Collins games were played on 38 evenings during the season.

In this season individuals played 256 Collins games, and so there were 128 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 420.

These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2011-2012 season:


   1812.40    Evans Clinchy
   1746.22    Richard Buck
   1727.67    Rebecca Lambert

NASPA ratings

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.

ISC Players

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.

Challenges and Postmortems

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.

High Games

The highest game score in a club session during this season was 700 by visiting player Karl Higby. This was Karl's highest-scoring game to date in a club or tourney. This ties the 6th highest score ever achieved in the Lexington Club. The game is detailed here.

Other games above 599 were: Merrill Kaitz 673, Jake Bergmann 610, Richard Buck 608, Judy Horn 603, Joel Horn 603, Joel Horn 600, Rebecca Lambert 600.

Most Games

Judy Horn played 321 games, which is 29 higher than her previous season's number. Joel Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 305 games, which is 4 higher than his previous season's number. Seven seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.

Most Wins

With 215 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 197 wins by Ben Harrison. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 204.

Most Points

With a total of 127,238 points, Judy Horn scored the most points in this season, up from 116,430 in the previous season. Joel Horn scored 127,148 points, so they were essentially tied. In the previous season Joel scored 118,292 points.

Highest Percentage Above Average

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 Claudia Cassel's 559, and that was 61.9% above her average.

Many Bingos by One Player

There were two 6-bingo games played in the season. Merrill's 673 game was one of these, and Joel Horn's 603 game was the other.

High Losing Score

The highest loss during this season was Claudia Cassel's 480 (to Ben Harrison's 558).

High Total Points

The game just mentioned above had a total of 1038 points, and this became the sixth-highest total to date in club history. It was the high total for the current season.

High Bingo

Joel Horn played a 158-point AGNOSTIC in the 2011-2012 season, but we are uncertain if this is indeed the highest bingo of the season.

High Tie

Jesse Day and Mike Wolfberg had the fourth-highest tie in club history, with a game score of 446-446.

High Non-Bingo

In October, 2010, Jamie Ryan made a 144-point non-bingo, which became the club's highest over its history. During the 2011-2012 season the highest non-bingo was made by Joel Horn. He scored 126 points for ENAMELED 15A though the Es at 15E and 15G. Joel passed up making a bingo elsewhere on the board for fewer points, and as a result was able to retain the blank in his rack.

Low Tie

There was a low tie of 327-327 between Richard Buck and Joel Horn. On the same night, Joel and Larry Katz tied at 355.

Newsy Item

Judy Horn prefixed RED with RETAILO to make RETAILORED as a 10-letter bingo.

High Session Attendance

The highest attendance during this season was 30 players on 22-Mar-12 and 17-May-11. One contributing reason for the unusually high attendance in May is Mark Fidler's Scrabble® students had been attending the club as part of their course activities.

More Details

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 January 31, 2014.