Mike scored 508 in his first moves, having bingoed with a double-double, a triple-triple, and two others. Later in the game, he unfortunately missed playing another triple-triple with two opportunities. He also accepted a word which he knew was a phony. The excessive room noise affected his focus at that point in the game, and he was getting low on time. Despite that, getting over 700 is a rare achievement, but it is disappointing to realize the score could have been over 800. The first missed triple-triple was PECTORAl at 1A which would have scored 149; instead he bingoed for 83 a turn later. Mike did find POsTRACE, which also would have worked and decided against it. PORTAnCE also fits. But even on his next turn, when he bingoed with OREIDEs, he could have played the triple-triple LOITEREd.
Mike's opponent in this game was Jamie Ryan, who was ranked second in the strong Lexington Club at the time. Jamie began the game with 3 trades of all his letters due to horrible racks. Later, he opened and kept the board open in an attempt to recover and catch up. This enabled Mike to take advantage of his better racks and add to his already-high score. The total score for this game was 1077, the second-highest total achieved at the Lexington Club in its 27-year existence.
This is the third time Mike exceeded 700 points in a game. His previous record was a 709-point game at the Lexington Club on 4-Nov-92. In that game, two of Mike's four bingos were non-challenged phonies. Mike played a 701-point game on 8-Jul-90 in which he played no phonies, but he let his opponent play one. The same is true of this game.
You can see a photo of the board here courtesy of Jamie Ryan.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o ----------------------------- 1|= T A L C U M ' W O| 2| - A " P J O Y| 3| D U I ' ' A L O O | 4|' G ' C H E W '| 5| A D O X | 6| " E " " A " | 7| ' N ' ' R ' | 8|N ' O Q A D I S ' B| 9|E ' T I ' ' E ' I| 10|R G I F " N " K| 11|V R V B O N E S E T I| 12|i R A T E L Y ' F I R N| 13|E Z ' ' - G| 14|S T I P U L E S H A E M - | 15|T ' O R E I D E s =| ----------------------------- a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Jamie Ryan Mike Wolfberg ---------------------- ----------------------- trade 7 0 0 QADI 8g 28 28 trade 7 0 0 HOARSEN k4 85 113 trade 7 0 0 LEX L3 39 152 JOW m2 39 39 BONESET 11g 90 242 iRATELY 12a 75 114 DENOTIVE e5 98 340 IF f9 28 142 FIRN 12L 28 368 WOO n1 33 175 NERVIEST a8 140 508 TAIGA d1 17 192 OY o1 43 551 trade 5 0 192 BIKING o8 39 590 STIPULES 14a 74 266 PAC j2 25 615 GRAZI c10 30 296 OREIDEs 15h 83 698 TALCUM 1d 30 326 HAEM 14j 39 737 DUI 3b 8 334 (ANU) 6 340 FINAL SCORE 340 737Notice the high total score of 1077 points.
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