up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2018 through August, 2019.
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 36 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 2018 through August 2019 Season. In this season, individuals played 2244 games, and so there were 1122 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 390. These numbers were 2294, 1147, and 393 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 390.
Of the 2244 individual games, 2141 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 390 for the season. These numbers were 2294, 2196, and 389 for the previous season.
There were 49 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 12.1, which is down from 13.1 in the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 3.78 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 equal to 66 one year ago and down from 78 players two years ago. During the 2018-2019 Season there were 19 (compared with 22 and 27 the two previous seasons) active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 16, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :
Steven Saul - averaged 417, won 117 of 168 games, scored 69975 points
Richard Buck - averaged 407, won 25 of 45 games
Wes Eddings - averaged 412, won 73 of 107 games
Carl Durdan - averaged 417, won 32 of 52 games
Chris Kulig - averaged 418, won 88 of 133 games
Joel Horn - averaged 413, won 132 of 208 games, scored 85929 points
Mark Fidler - averaged 398, won 62 of 102 games
Jake Bergmann - averaged 406, won 38 of 64 games
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 404, won 96 of 166 games
Don Finkey - averaged 406, won 14 of 20 games
Bob Becker - averaged 399, won 45 of 83 games
Daniel Novinson - averaged 395, won 35 of 56 games
Carol McDonald - averaged 390, won 57 of 117 games
Judy Horn - averaged 386, won 94 of 224 games, scored 86561 points
Marvin Kraus - averaged 380, won 58 of 132 games
Linda Giovinazzo - averaged 363, won 39 of 110 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:
Emmanuek Aronie, Mic Barron, John Cheras, Judy Cole, Steven Gonzales,
Alan Goodman, Aaron Green, Elaine Hiller, Adam Kalai, James Krycka,
Jack Niles, Rachel Oppenheimer, Barbara Revkin, Isaias Sarmiento,
Jon Shreve, Chris Sinacola, Lee Smith, Diana Spiller, Brad Whitmarsh,
Wayne Yorra
Season Average Ratings of the Top 16 Active Players
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1769.27 Steven Saul 1738.55 Mike Wolfberg
1764.89 Richard Buck 1729.26 Don Finkey
1763.96 Wes Eddings 1728.35 Bob Becker
1762.10 Carl Durdan 1713.47 Daniel Novinson
1758.10 Chris Kulig 1707.71 Carol McDonald
1755.77 Joel Horn 1703.94 Judy Horn
1749.21 Mark Fidler 1694.55 Marvin Kraus
1744.29 Jake Bergmann 1658.17 Linda Giovinazzo
Here are the players of the above top 16 who increased their average
ratings in comparison with their average ratings in the 2017-1018 Season:
23.46 Chris
21.83 Mark
14.55 Bob
13.68 Marvin
13.44 Joel
12.36 Jake
12.16 Carol
11.02 Linda
7.01 Judy
4.88 Richard
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 NWL2018 games and Collins games (if any), and the acceptable words shown are based on the CSW2019 Lexicon. Collins games were played on 37 evenings during the season and on 24 evenings during the previous season.
In this season individuals played 200 Collins games, and so there were 100 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 421. These numbers in the previous season were: 136, 68, 424.
These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2018-2019 Season:
1781.14 Carl Durdan 1779.47 Richard Buck 1751.36 Jake Bergmann
The highest Collins games during the season were:
Richard Buck 601, 588, and 580
Jake Bergmann 567
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 595 by Judy Horn. Runner-up high scores were:
Joel Horn 593 Richard Buck 589 Daniel Novinson 587
Judy Horn played 226 games, which is 2 lower than her previous season's number. Joel Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 208 games, which is 1 higher than his previous season's number. Fourteen seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 132 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, which is 4 higher than his previous season's number. The runner-up for the most wins was 117 by Steven Saul. In the previous season, Steven had 113 wins and Judy Horn had the runner-up number of wins with 110.
With a total of 86,561 points, Judy Horn scored the most points in this season, down from 87,599 in the previous season. Joel Horn scored 85,929 points. In the previous season Joel scored 85,307 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 Judy Horn's 595, and that was 54.2% above her average. Runners-up were Daniel Novinson with 48.6% and Richard Buck with 46.3%.
On 27-Jun-19, in a game between Joel Horn and Mike Wolfberg there were a total of 7 bingos played: four by Joel and three by Mike. Joel's bingos were: SYM(B)OLED, (N)ATURIsT, BAI(L)SMEN, and WEIRDeD. Mike's bingos were: PREBOIL, EVE(N)TFUL, and (T)ARTNESS. Joel won with a game score of 472-441.
The highest loss during this season was Chris Kulig's 501 (to Jake Bergmann's 544). This also became the 7th-highest total score in club history. This game set the record for the highest losing score in club history replacing the previous record of a 500-point losing score when Steven Saul defeated Joel Horn 546-500 on 7-Oct-2004.
Chris Kulig defeated Bob Becker 572-462 on 20-Dec-18 for a total of 1034 points. This became the eigth-highest total in this club's history.
On 7-Feb-19 Steven Saul scored 111 points for JEEZ at 1A. There have been 6 games in club history with a higher-scoring non-bingo.
We did not make a note of noteworthy long words for this season.
On 17-Jan-19, Wes Eddings played FiNITES underneath EGaLITE. There was also an R above the leading letter of EGaLITE. This was a going-out play scoring 98 points.
The highest OWL attendance during this season was 17 players on two evenings.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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