up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2017 through August, 2018.
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 35 years. Judy Cole and Joel Horn serve as associate directors. 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 2017 through August 2018 Season. In this season, individuals played 2294 games, and so there were 1147 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 393. These numbers were 2632, 1316, and 390 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 390.
Of the 2294 individual games, 2196 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 389 for the season. These numbers were 2632, 2448, and 389 for the previous season.
There were 49 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 13.06, which is up from 12.33 in the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 3.58 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.
66 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. This is down from 78 one year ago and 80 players two years ago. During the 2017-2018 Season there were 22 (compared with 27 and 23 the two previous seasons) active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 20, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :
Wes Eddings - averaged 415, won 64 of 97 games
Richard Buck - averaged 435, won 45 of 106 games
Steven Saul - averaged 424, won 113 of 163 games
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 406, won 112 of 174 games, scored 70715 points
Joel Horn - averaged 408, won 128 of 209 games, scored 85307 points
Chris Kulig - averaged 405, won 111 of 187 games, scored 75763 points
Jake Bergmann - averaged 400, won 36 of 64 games
Don Finkey - averaged 387, won 12 of 26 games
Mark Fidler - averaged 396, won 79 of 133 games
Bob Becker - averaged 399, won 22 of 39 games
Aaron Green - averaged 387, won 28 of 53 games
Judy Horn - averaged 388, won 110 of 226 games, scored 87599 points
Carol McDonald - averaged 388, won 57 of 131 games
Marvin Kraus - averaged 371, won 47 of 128 games
Emmanuel Aronie - averaged 359, won 18 of 48 games
Claudia Cassel - averaged 347, won 32 of 101 games
Betsey Wood - averaged 357, won 7 of 31 games
Linda Giovinazzo - averaged 360, won 22 of 78 games
Wayne Yorra - averaged 364, won 13 of 34 games
Marc Goldstein - averaged 341, won 15 of 56 games
These players attended our club during the season, but failed to
play the minimum of twenty games to qualify to be considered as active:
Mic Barron, Judy Cole, Catherine Day, Carl Durdan,
Mack Meller, Jon Shreve.
Season Average Ratings of the Top 20 Active Players
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1770.14 Wes Eddings 1713.01 Aaron Green
1760.01 Richard Buck 1696.93 Judy Horn
1750.76 Steven Saul 1695.55 Carol McDonald
1745.42 Mike Wolfberg 1680.87 Marvin Kraus
1742.33 Joel Horn 1664.13 Emmanuel Aronie
1734.64 Chris Kulig 1657.16 Claudia Cassel
1731.93 Jake Bergmann 1653.42 Betsey Wood
1730.66 Don Finkey 1647.15 Linda Giovinazzo
1727.38 Mark Fidler 1642.80 Wayne Yorra
1713.80 Bob Becker 1626.43 Marc Goldstein
Here are the players of the above top 20 who increased their average
ratings in comparison with their average ratings in the 2016-2017 Season.
Thanks to Joel Horn for the idea.
23.2 Claudia
14.2 Linda
11.2 Steven
8.3 Marvin
7.4 Marc
4.7 Chris K.
4.1 Richard
4.0 Jake
3.2 Wayne
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.
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 OWL16 games and Collins games (if any), and the acceptable words shown are based on the CSW2015 Lexicon. Collins games were played on 24 evenings during the season and on 29 evenings during the previous season.
In this season individuals played 136 Collins games, and so there were 68 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 424. These numbers in the previous season were: 168, 84, 421.
These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2017-2018 Season:
1814.43 Mohan Chunkath
1768.81 Jake Bergmann
1766.57 Richard Buck
The highest Collins games during the season were:
Mohan Chunkath 589 and 579
Carl Durdan 577
We usually have about 3-6 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 689 by visitor Mack Meller. Other games above 599 were:
Mack Meller 645 Joel Horn 622 Mack Meller 609
Judy Horn played 226 games, which is 6 higher than her previous season's number. Joel Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 209 games, which is 26 lower than his previous season's number. Thirteen seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 128 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 110 wins by Judy Horn. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 154.
With a total of 87,599 points, Judy Horn scored the most points in this season, down from 88,506 in the previous season. Joel Horn scored 85,307 points. In the previous season Joel scored 97,299 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 Marc Goldstein's 532, and that was 57.8% above his average. Runners-up were Joel Horn with 52.7% and Judy Horn with 42.8%.
Mack Meller played a 6-bingo game on his first visit to this club against the club's 2nd-ranked player. The bingos were: EXPIRED, SILICLE, THEREON, SiMNELS, NOTECAR(D), and YTtRIUM(S). Mack played these among his first 8 plays of the game. This was the 11th time in club history when six bingos were played in a game.
Jake played a 5-bingo OWL game, with these bingos: LOUNGERS, CURVATE (accepted Collins word), DEBONAIR, REDTAILS, and OVERDRAW (9X).
Joel Horn played two 5-bingo games in this season, and there may have been other such games.
The highest loss during this season was probably Chris Kulig's 489 (to Jake Bergmann's 522). This was the 5th-highest losing score in club history. In second place for a high losing score during the season was probably Joel Horn's 477 loss (to Mike Wolfberg's 506).
Chris Kulig defeated Jake Bergmann 522-489 for a total of 1011 points. Jake made a 221-point EXAMIn(E)S in that game.
The runner-up highest total was probably 983 in a game between Mike Wolfberg and Joel Horn.
Jake Bergmannn scored 221 for his triple-triple EXAMIn(E)S.
We did not make a note of noteworthy non-bingos for this season.
We did not make a note of noteworthy long words for this season.
Mack Meller joined us in the summer for a few weeks. Mack is usually ranked among the top ten players in North America. On his initial visit, he established a very high tentative club rating of 2019, averaging 530. His record was 13-3, averaging 490, with a tentative club rating of 1947. Generally, the highest-rated player has a club rating of about 1800.
Judy Horn and Mark Fidler tied with 418-418.
The highest OWL attendance during this season was 19 players on one evening.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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