Antics with Angela

Angela Reflects

Angela Vietto’s birthday is in February, but we celebrated it at the club meeting in March since a schedule conflict had precluded a more timely celebration. In 2014 Angela became just the fourth person to have won 200 career games at the Charleston club! She began playing at the club in 2005 and finished that year with a record of 2-29-1 and a scoring average of 259, but she persevered and steadily improved her play, winning the Charleston Scrabble Club’s Most Improved Player award multiple times!! From January of 2013 through last month Angela has had a record of 58-49 and a scoring average of 371 in club play!

Lisa, Angela, Daiva, Chuck

Angela is an English professor at EIU with a special interest in early American literature. Those who might associate chastity and excessive modesty with that time period might be surprised to know that Angela chose VAMPY and ZOOTY (which means “flashy in manner or style”) along with FAB as being worthy of the “Angela descriptive word” prizes. Mary Maddox, Marty Gabriel, and Lisa Lovelace, respectively, played those words for 39, 74, and 31 points to earn those prizes. Della Lutz won the high “V for Vietto” word prize with her play of SOLVENT for 116 pts! And Marty also won a high V word prize by playing EVACUEE for 75 pts.

Yeah, that’s right. Chuck.

Angela grew up near Pittsburgh and graduated from Penn State and another player from Pennsylvania, Alex Ware, made a very welcome return to the club in March after a two-year absence. Alex had scored 427 points in the only game he played in an extraordinarily impressive debut at the club back in February of 2013! Unfortunately, work activities precluded his continued participation at the club, but he’s recently retired and seems raring to play. Alex noted that there was a Scrabble club at his high school in Pennsylvania and he was undefeated in four years of play there! Alex purchased a new Scrabble dictionary (5th edition) and he observed that many words are now allowed that were not allowed during his high school days, such as the notes of the musical scale. Coincidentally, DOH, FAH, SOH, LAH, and TE will be among the newly acceptable words as of April 10!

Alex squares off against Della

Other noteworthy bingos included ELOPERS, SINUSES, and WANTONS by Angela, GENTLES and ELUTING by Mary, AEROBIC by Lisa, PROPANE by Daiva Markelis, DOUSING by Alex, GUIDERS by Scott Hawkins, NANNIES by Chuck Jones, INTERNAL by Wendy Edwards, and CANTONAL, ROADEOS, and ALTOIST by Marty.

Marty 547 / Mary 450

 For more March photos, check out our photos page.