Wild October Words

In October we celebrated the birthdays of that busy, NOIRISH, wiz, Mary Maddox, and the continually learning Lisa Lovelace, who has been known to be quite the QUOTER. As you may have surmised, the descriptions above contain words or derivatives of words that were played at the club meeting and chosen by Mary and Lisa as being apt and prize worthy in accordance with a club tradition. The extra attention lavished upon her apparently put Mary in such a charitable mood that she played DONATES as a bingo in two different games! She further distinguished herself by playing SPRAWLER, a rather strange but acceptable word.

Lisa played CUSTARD and her traveling companion, Chuck Jones, played SUGARED, perhaps after eating a piece of one of the delicious cakes so generously provided by Wendy Edwards and Ranji Adukia. Wendy also played SIPHONED and RESIGNER, and Ranji also played PATINAE and DINGOES.

It’s worth noting that BINGO, DINGO, JINGO, LINGO, and PINGO are all acceptable words and that all can be pluralized by adding ES, but only BINGO and PINGO can also be pluralized by simply adding an S! Daiva Markelis played GINZOES, which is similarly the only acceptable pluralized form of GINZO, an offensive word for an Italian.  (It’s important to note that club and tourney Scrabble players realize offensive words such as this are acceptable and can be played benignly in adult club and tourney play even though they aren’t found in the sanitized version of the “Official Scrabble Dictionary” that’s sold in bookstores and can easily be read by children.)

Amazingly, Daiva played a second bingo containing a Z when she played ZESTIER, becoming the second player in the last three club meetings to bingo with a Z twice in one day!  Michael Arnold made a rare trip from St. Louis to Charleston and thrillingly played EROTICA. Ironically, Terri Coleman, another NONRESIDENT of Illinois, played the last eight letters of that word for a bingo in her game with Michael!

On the other hand, it was more than seasonally appropriate when former middle linebacker, Marty Gabriel, played AUDIBLE and YARDAGE, a couple of words of particular significance to football enthusiasts. Even more serendipitously he played AUDIBLE against a NONFAN, who did not know the word may be used as a verb to describe an impromptu changing of a play call or strategy.

AUDIBLED even has an interesting anagram, BUDDLEIA, which artist/ gardener/player Jacqui Worden or her beau, NEWBIE Victor Semenow, may have known is a shrub.  In other action, Angela Vietto, played EELIEST and HERNIAE.