From: BigJimK@aol.com
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 16:14:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Reno--The Fantasy
Message-id: <970717161427_-1258999808@emout13.mail.aol.com>
(The following may contain fabrications, falsehoods, fictions and fudged facts. It contains no f-words, however.)
The end of the Reno tournament was quite interesting. Going into the last round, I trailed Joel Sherman by 1073 spread points and one win.
"Any interesting plays in the tourney so far?" I asked him.
"Actually, I've played three 15-letter bingos so far, including one through separated groups of letters," he said, "but my dream is to play a 15-letter bingo through three disconnected groups of letters. I've never done that."
"Hmm," I said, wondering how he'd gotten over a thousand spread points ahead of me. "I've done that twice in this tournament alone."
The game went along rather uneventfully, although during one 2-move stretch in the game I played ANAGRAMMATICAL and ZADDIK while Joel played DOG and CAT, which I think shows something about our relative playing strengths. But his triple-triple CONVEXITY (reader quiz: how much did he score for that play?) helped him to take a 86-point lead with this being the position:
r a j + - - c o n v e x i t y - n o d d y - - - e - - - $ - - - $ o e - + - + n - - $ - - a n a g r a m m a t i c a l + - - - - e - - - - - $ a - u - - # - - p # - - - # - t - v - - - + - r - + - + - - - + - - * - - + e - - w h o o p e e s - - + - s h o e + - - - + - n - # - - s # u - - # - - - # e - - - - e - t - - - $ - - l a + - - $ s - g + - z a d d i k - - $ - - w o - + i - - r - - - $ - - - o - - - n - - u $ - * - - + - - - * - - - + b - *My rack was BEILR??.
I looked at Joel, who had just fished his L at N11, and his visage showed extreme satisfaction.
(Here I pause to allow the reader a chance to discover the play I made to win not only the game but the tournament.)
"You think I'm going to let your dream come true?" I asked.
"Kramer," he said, "if you block my spot I will never forgive you. Come on, you have second place wrapped up anyway."
"Not really," I thought to myself, but aloud I said, "Don't worry. I wouldn't dream of blocking your once-in-a-lifetime play. I'm all about helping people's dreams come true. Besides, my own dreams include making a six-letter play on a triple line using both blanks as the same letter and scoring no more than ten points." I laid down LIbbER at 15B for 10 points.
"Thank you," he said with a sigh of relief, playing VENTRILOQUIZING J1 for 93 points, putting him 169 points up.
"Happy to oblige," I said, thankful that the 25% chance of leaving an F in the bag had materialized. I looked at the board and back at my rack as if I'd just now seen the possibility that I'd been playing for. "What's this?" I said. "It looks like I've got a 15-letter bingo through three separate tile groups too." I played FLIBBERTIGIBBET at 15A. "And mine is a triple-triple-triple! That's 698 points, plus 8 for your F. I win by 537!"
And so in spectacular fashion I won my 10th Reno tournament, and my 200th overall.
Come join me in Cincinnati, where I'll be shooting for my 10th Masters crown.
All the best,
Jim Kramer
(Reader quiz answer: Joel scored 216 for CONVEXITY. It could only have been a non-bingo with VEX already on the board.)