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NSC 2009 Commentary: Round 5

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Round 28, Round 29, Round 30, Round 31, After the Tournament.

Round 5

Christopher Sykes (Cambridge ON) had a 525-372 win this round against Alan Stern (Shadow Hills, CA). TROUT was on the board, played by Alan, and Chris played XYPHOID*/TROUTY for 127 points. Neither player knew until after I'd left that it is XIPHOID that is the good word!

The very quiet table 1 annotator, Kate Watson, almost never tells me about table 1 plays because she's seen it all and it takes a lot to impress her. So, imagine my delight to find her the internet table telling me that a player at table 1 had a triple-triple outbingo of cOVERAGE for 158 and still lost the game! Sure enough, Frank Tangredi (West Babylon, NY) found this terrific play through the R, but lost to Rafi Stern (Seattle, WA), 482-508. Be sure to check out the annotated game this round!

I managed to find a game that Jim Kramer (Roseville, MN) won (he always shows me ones he loses!). He played Robert Quigley (New York, NY) this round. Robert's bingos were BRAYinG and SKATING. Jim played InFUSION, LAETRILE, MEDIATE, and OINOMEL. 539-374, Jim's win.

The siren call of a 10-letter word called me over to a game nearing the end of a recount between Ross Brown (Kanata ON) and Stan Miranda (Albuquerque, NM). As they were agreeing to the 405-399 win for Stan, Ross explained that he had played FLEXION. Stan later played JASmINE/FLEXIONS, and then later on Ross played REFLEXIONS which drew a challenge. Pretty pretty, long and pretty.

The way this room is set up, power reaches us on the floor via a cable dropped down, down, down from the ceiling far above. So, the lookup laptops at round raised tables down the middle of the room have a kind of science fiction-like look with these serpentine cords attaching them to the ceiling. I'll try to take some more shots of the room to convey this better.

My apologies for the delay in color today. Mary Rhoades decided we needed more headshots and more updated headshots and focusing on that task has yielded more than 100 so far, but that takes a bit of time away from the ol "who played what when." I'll be back on it in a more timely fashion tomorrow, I promise!