up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
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:
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The highest loss during this season was Claudia Cassel's 480 (to Ben Harrison's 558).
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.
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.
Jesse Day and Mike Wolfberg had the fourth-highest tie in club history, with a game score of 446-446.
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.
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.
Judy Horn prefixed RED with RETAILO to make RETAILORED as a 10-letter bingo.
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.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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