I lost some of the game sheets from last week... went 5-0 that week, 3-1 this week. A strong former player has lately returned after apparently not playing for 7-8 years. Last week he plays MUZJIK thru my J on his third turn (the "I" was a blank). I nearly challenged (was confused with MUSJID, thought maybe it had to be MUSJIK). On my 7th turn against him in a chokingly defensive game, I'd just drawn what appeared to be a promising rack with only one S hook on the board remaining... AAERTT?. I don't remember if I managed to see any of the 7's in this (I only remember being frustrated at it!!). Lexpert says only 5 7's... REGATTA, TEACART (I actually LOOK for TEA- words now, there's enough of them that it's worth it), ARIETTA (I constantly miss seeing this and ARIETTE), TUATERA, and TABARET. Eventually I settled on a cheap 8 through an open E, STEARATE. His next turn was a 4 point dump/setup play that left me in a 217-169 point lead with pretty useless rack, and him with an unblockable setup to bingo down the triple (2 S's remained unaccounted for... the blatant setup indicated he had one or both)
Off the last E of STEARATE, I played eH/HOG, just short of a DWS for 12 points. I could have done He/HOG for 19 on the other side hitting a DWS... certainly that was obvious to him. I still held a G, so I could hook that HOG as HOGG for pretty good points (and maybe even a failed challenge to boot)... and that lane could only handle a word up to 6 letters, so him bingoing using HOGS hook wasn't a worry. He could try blocking this hook for low points, and get further behind... or use the hook at the cost of an S for reasonable points (but at least diminished his bingo chances)... or leave it to me, and try to overcome my lead with a bingo down the triple off his earlier setup. After about a 5 minute turn, he left it, and simply played off an F for 20. I don't remember the next few plays other than he didn't manage to bingo. My second last turn, holding 313-283 lead and him with QU etc, was to dump (E)PINAOI off an E at the bottom center TWS for 10 points. This blocked both of the last bingo lanes. I'd drawn the last S. He decided against playing an S-hookable Q word for higher points, and dumped it as (S)EQUELA for 17, ending above the bottom right hand TWS. Perfectly safe from SEQUELAE, because EPINAOIE wouldn't work =). Game ends 343-312.
This post is too long already, I'll have to do a separate post for this week's!