The CSC has finally come to an end. Ganesh slowed down near the end, losing to Pakorn after his second defeat to Oscar. The Australians camped in the top 5, with Chris May coming out tops amongst them. As a reflection of the strength of the field, we have a rare sight of Pakorn having a negative spread at the end of a tourney.
The result slip for the players have spaces for players to record the bingos played, up to 4 for each player, so that the organiser can compile them. Ganesh has stopped writing his since yesterday, complaining that he had too many to write. He listed the bingos for Michael later (up to game 18): with 3 games with 5 bingos, 4 with 4 bingos, and 3 with 2 bingos, all the rest are 3 bingos. This is the first time I know of someone averaging above 3 bingos in a tournament. But then again, this is the first time I see a 3000+ spread.
Goh Jiang Pern just noted that Ganesh’s final average game score, 511, is actually higher than his own high game for the tournament (510). As a comparison, Naween Fernando, the 4th placed player, had only one game with higher score than Ganesh’s average.
Andy Kurnia (SIN) found the nice PEJORATES from PE for 100 against Ronald Credo (PHI) in round 21, but still lost. Ronald had CROSSED for 105 in the same game. Goh Jiang Pern (SIN) found BOOTLACES for 92 from BO against Nigel Richards (MAL), but still lost. It seems that it is not good for a Singapore player to find a high scoring nine letter word …
Odette played ZANYISH to the H against Michael. But now she is recounting to me her exciting game against Panupol in round 12. They were neck to neck, up to move 11, with the score being 326-325 for Panupol. At that point, Panupol played AA for 2 points one short of TWS setting up himself for a bingo. From Odette’s perspective, an S and a blank was unseen (the Z and Q too) with 3 in the bag, so alarm bells were ringing. Her rack was the beautiful BRTTIOU. She decided to balance and not empty the bag, playing CUT (5) and picking up ZO. Panupol expectedly slapped down a bingo, SUCKIEr (98). But the game was not over for Odette, since she found ROBOTIZE to the E of SUCKIER for 95, and caught Panupol with the Q. Final score, 445-426 to Odette, including the 20 from the Q.
The twist is, SUCKIER* is a TWL2 word, and not valid in SOWPODS! Both Panupol and Odette play with TWL2 in their home countries, so the word looked natural to them. But even if Odette realised, she shouldn’t challenge since ROBOTIZE was the only way for her to win. With these anecdotes, I will wrap up my coverage of the CSC 2006. Hopefully next year will see an equally exciting, and perhaps one without runaways to make for more intense competition.
