Round 18 Commentary

More media appearances. Burleigh Hines from CBS, Channel 2, interviewed both Brian Cappelletto and Lisa Odom. Brian talked about the need to know both words and strategy and how important is a complete game. He also went into the importance of knowing 2- and 3-letter words and bingo stems, such as SATIRE racks. Brian mentioned his 212-point play of RAZEEING and when asked what it meant, he said, "It is the present participle of the word RAZEE, but I don't know what that means." Burleigh went onto interview Lisa Odom, too, since she is currently the highest-ranking woman in division 1. She mentioned her 637 game and her 257-point play of FOREJUDGE. When the interviewer asked if she considered herself a SCRABBLE^® junkie, she laughed and agreed that she probably was. After that interview, Lisa told me that she has been interviewed daily by a local Chicago radio station, WLVP, on Buzz Killman's show. He calls her daily at 6:45 a.m. and asks her how her games are going. His show is one of those "wake-up" shows with many jokes and laughs. It's clear Buzz has been reading up on competitive play, because he asked Lisa about coffeehousing. He said he liked it and she said the players didn't. Eileen Gruhn (WA) says she took advantage of Erica Norris' poor draws with a win of 441-367. Three bingos went down for Eileen: her first play DELATING for 83, natural SQUIRTER for 88, and INTITlES for 70. DELATING went down to the G in Erica's first play of GONIF. Erica played WHEEdLES for 84. Eileen is now 7-11 (she offers me a soda from her fountain).

Steven Alexander, who had the very strong 583 victory the game before, was beaten 500-429 by Avi Moss (NY), despite the loser's two 100+ point plays. They were: ANTLEReD, triple-triple for 131 and DIAPHONE for 101. Another player, overhearing this, said, "How did you get so much worse in just one game?"

Joan Mocine has a story for me, but she says she has to kill herself first instead. I guess she doesn't have a good story.....

Gregg Foster lost 4 out of the last 6 games and all 4 of his losses had him with a losing score of exactly 391. He is 9-9 and gripping hard to keep it even.

Jan Dixon just beat Joe Edley to halt his 5-game winning streak. The key, says Jan, "was that Joe, late in the game, played CURETING with natural tiles. I challenged it, knowing that there was a blank and an S still in the bag. I ende dup getting them both, but waited four turns to play a bingo, playing off one tile at a time, knowing that there a Z in the bag. With one tile in the bag, I went ahead and played my bingo because there were no possible comebacks and low and behold, I did get stuck with the Z! But I had built up enough of a lead that she decided she could do that. Ironically, the board had gotten so tight that Joe could not go out with his 1-point tiles."

I have more coverage for round 18, but will send this for now.

-- Sherrie Saint John, Internet Reporter, NSC98

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