The End of the Road

To avoid misunderstandings, this is the wife speaking. I have just seen the standings on the WSC official website. Not exactly what I would have expected, so I thought I should count the positive and negative aspects, to see whether I should mourn or rejoice.

Minuses:

1. Romania is (I think) back to the one-player team.
2. The very supportive people back home (Septimiu and the U Cluj club, for example) may be disappointed.
3. I'm afraid my husband would get drunk if he drank alcohol. Honestly, I'm sorry he doesn't. As I mentioned before, I'm a terribly sorry loser, so I'd probably be suicidal were I in his shoes.
4. The surprise breakfast (pancakes!) I had planned for him is off. That was the breakfast for champions.

Pluses:

1. Our house has been very clean and neat for the past seven days.
2. I can eat my favourite cereal every morning because the bag stays miraculously full during the night.
3. I don't have to watch TV wearing headphones anymore (Adrian doesn't watch TV).
4. The strange ringing in my husband's ears (it sounds something like: "How many times have I told you not to leave your dirty socks on the floor?" "Take your feet off the desk!" "Dry the dishes and put them back in the cupboard after you've washed them!" and other such endearing words) has completely disappeared.

Another minus: all the pluses enumerated above will magically disappear as soon as Adrian is back from Malaysia.
Another plus: pending on the Causeway Challenge results, the pancake breakfast might be back on schedule.

Congratulations to all the players, good luck tomorrow to the two Lords on top and, as the Japanese put it, お疲れ様でした (otsukare sama deshita = your efforts during the day are much appreciated).
Carmen

WSC( Day 3 at lunchtime)

Today started with four interesting games. Joel Wapnick and Brian Bowman played a nine timer each to win their games against me while I had a late nine timer against Michael Tang which won me the game.That's three nine timers in 4 games!!! In the game against Victor Ikawa a late setup for my E gave me the win. I have started picking good tiles. Whenever my opponent looks away, I take some " goodies" out of the bag! The strategy works and I am planning to keep doing that...
Game17: Adrian Tamas SS? Joel Wapnick JQZXSS? lost
Game18: Adrian Tamas ZXSS?? (exchanged 3 times!) Michael Tang QJSS won
Game19: Adrian Tamas S?X Victor Ikawa JZQSSS?
Game20: Adrian Tamas SSJX? Brian Bowman ZQSS? Lost

I hope that the non- scrabble players don't think that this game is just about luck. It requires a lot of concentration, intuition and word knowledge. If you don't have this, you can take all the goodies from the bag and still lose! It's time to go back for my next game.