UVSC Session Report
March 4, 2019 (Session #217)
(authored by BJ)

This week's session was a small one, with just Iliana, Marilyn and I in
attendance.  Marilyn started asking some strategy questions, and of
course Iliana and I were happy to oblige, so we ended up having a couple
of nice strategy discussion games together.  Following those, Iliana and
I played four more games until the wee hours.

The evening started out with Marilyn passing on her opening turn against
me.  (That may, in fact, have been what triggered our strategy
discussions.)  Despite my reservations about what bingo she might
unleash if I gave her the right letter, I had a strong play and so I
made it: AZERTY# (a keyboard layout common in Europe) for 56 points.
(Oh and did I mention, Marilyn decided to try Collins!)  Sure enough,
she was looking for an E and came right back with REMEDIES.  She later
followed that up with OUTGAVE, and I was very pleased to find the weird
word INQILAB# (revolution, in Indian English) for 70 points as a
non-bingo.  Other fun plays on the night included Iliana's JOKER for 67,
which also formed NO, OIK (a boor), and SPATE in stack/parallel fashion.
She also nicely extended BOX to BOXINESS for 54, played ZILAS# for 68 (a
ZILA# was an administrative district in British India), and found the
sweet bingo OXYSALT (a type of chemical salt) for 90.  For my part I
hooked TUX onto the end of FORE to make FOREX (a foreign exchange) for
57, and bumbled my way into a lucky triple-triple for 167: MAUNDERS (to
MAUNDER is to talk incoherently).

The remainder of our bingos included RIOTOUS, RONTGEN (a unit of
radiation dosage, more often spelled ROENTGEN), EROTICAS, BURITIS# (a
BURITI# is a type of palm tree), NOTAIRE# (a French official who
certifies documents), SPARTAN, BARDIER# (BARDY# means insolent),
HOTTIES, URINATOR (a diver), CRINITES (a CRINITE is a fossil of a marine
animal), NATTIER, ENROLLED, ZINGIEST, SEDGIER, FELTERS# (to FELTER# is
to mat together like felt), ARCSINE (a trigonometric function), SOILAGE
(green crops for feeding animals), and FAVORER.

Note: There were a lot of Collins-only words this week (those marked
with a #).  To those not familiar, The Collins English Dictionary is the
primary word source for Scrabble as played outside of North America, and
contains significantly more words than the traditional North American
Scrabble lexicon (TWL), which is based on Merriam-Webster and other
dictionaries.  Collins-based Scrabble (also known as CSW) is also played
in North America, and in order to be clear about words that are in one
lexicon but not the other, we mark those words specially: a # for
Collins-only, and a $ for TWL-only (the latter of which there are only a
small number of).

Pictured below is the (CSW) game between Marilyn and BJ.