UVSC Session Report
Monday, August 26, 2019 (Session #242)
(authored by BJ)

We were pleased to have our friend Andrew join us for the first time
this week.  He is now living closer to our area and hopes to join us now
and then -- hooray!  Along with Margaret, Ellen, Iliana and I, we played
24 total games.  Ellen had the play of the night, extending AS into
ASSAULTED for a nice 9-letter bingo.  None of our high scoring bingos
and non-bingos were particularly high this week; ZERIBA# for 54 by me
and DOZIER for 51 by Iliana were the only ones reported, in fact.  One
notable word that appeared this week was HMMM, with three M's.  It's not
that often that one sees words on the board that literally cannot be
played without using a blank.  In this case, since there are only two
M's in a Scrabble set, a blank is required to make HMMM.  It was formed
by extending HMM, hooking the word TRANSOM to it, with the final M as
the blank.  The only other word of this nature that I'm aware of that
has been played at this club is FRIZZES back in October of 2017, but we
only record bingos, not shorter words.  There are a large number of
words in both lexicons that cannot be played without a blank.  In NWL
(the North American lexicon), there are 32 such words of length four or
less.  Here is a sample: BIBB, FAFF, SHHH, EKKA, KAKI, HAJJ, JUJU, HMMM,
MMM, MUMM, BAZZ, TIZZ, ZIZZ, ZUZ, ZZZ.

And finally, some of our other bingo words this week included TURTLES,
SUCTION, RIFFING, ROSARIA (plural of ROSARIUM, a rose garden), NACRITE#
(a clay mineral), SERRIES (to SERRY is to crowd together), TETANIES
(TETANY is a condition marked by painful muscular spasms), UNLINKED,
THERIAN (a member of a subclass of mammals), AEROSAT (a satellite for
air traffic control), DEROGATE (to detract), DISINTER (to exhume),
ATONIES (ATONY is muscular weakness), STEARIC (pertaining to STEARIN,
the solid portion of any fat), NIOBATE (a salt of niobium), REQUINS (a
REQUIN is a kind of shark), WRITERS, and SPOILERS.