If only I was sure that my head on the door was a dream

Once again, I need to congratulate Kevin for another outstanding performance at a Scrabble tournament. He went down to Charlotte and came back with a nice chunk of change in his pocket for winning his division. He was 13-1 and won most of those games with ease.

With that in mind, I wanted to share one of our recent games. We've been doing that Wednesday night thing, and we had a really good game two weeks ago. Because the board was so pretty, I reconstructed it later and I'm sharing a picture of it here.

Here's how the plays went:

David 1: BLAME ..........24 (24)
Kevin 1: ENVIOUS.......73 (73)
David 2: AY ..................22 (46)
Kevin 2: REMANDED......86 (159)
David 3: BIO ............5 (51)
Kevin 3: RAKE ..........30 (189)
David 4: IsATINE ........67 (118)
Kevin 4: TINNY ..........18 (207)
David 5: EX .............52 (170)
Kevin 5: WRY ............18 (225)
David 6: FOP ............21 (191)
Kevin 6: QUILT ..........28 (253)
David 7: LORE ...........18 (209)
Kevin 7: FEZ ............30 (283)
David 8: JoWS ...........63 (272)
Kevin 8: SWATTER ........74 (357)
David 9: COVER ..........30 (302)
Kevin 9: OHO ............35 (392)
David 10: FOH ..........13 (315)
Kevin 10: COATI ........20 (412)
David 11: PAL ..........10 (325)
Kevin 11: DIG ..........11 (423)
David 12: RECOVERING ...48 (373)
Kevin 12: SILEX ........29 (452)
David 13: BAUD .........28 (401)
Kevin 13: ET ...........18 (470)
David 14: TUG ...........4 (405)

Kevin had three points (A-E-I) remaining on his rack, so I got six for that, pushing my total to 411 to his 470.

I really liked this game because despite starting off in a huge hole, I managed to crawl back and make it close. Kevin had three bingos to my one. I got both blanks. Kevin got three of the four esses. We split the "power" tiles; I got X and J while Kevin got K, Q, and Z. All told, the tile gods were pretty fair. "ENVIOUS" was a great find by Kevin. I liked my "RECOVERING" a lot because it isn't often you get to play a ten letter word, and although it wasn't a bingo ("COVER" was already on the board -- I simply added the RE- and -ING hooks), 48 is nothing to sneeze at.

One of us hitting 400 is pretty normal, but it's rare for both of us to hit that mark.

Kevin had 13 plays for 470, which is an average of 36.15 points per turn.
I had 14 plays for 411, which is an average of 29.36 points per turn.

Another great thing about this game is that there isn't really anything fancy there. None of my ridiculous triple-triples. With the exception of my "JoWS", the triple word squares weren't really a big factor.

Back in the day, we'd take way more turns and get less total points, so we've both improved drastically. I'm still planning on getting back into the tournament fray, and thankfully when I do, Kevin will be in a higher division than I. Athens GA is a possibility. February 25-26. The 'Canes will be off for the Olympic break, so I don't have to worry about a game interfering. I won't be able to watch the medal rounds on TV, but I'll be okay with that.

Now playing:

The Dandy Warhols Come Down