Jim Kramer's Spectacular Tournament Stories

5 - Hey, I Have a 15-Letter Word Too!

The end of the 1997 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 an 86-point lead with this being the position:

I looked at Joel, who had just fished his L at N11, and his visage showed extreme satisfaction.

"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 29% 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.