Puzzle

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This position occurred today when I played on the ISC.

My rack is at the top: AEEFHIZ.

There's no bingo possible, but I found a play that was just as good. Can you find it?

HAFIZ at 14J for 82 points.

HAFIZ n pl. HAFIS a Muslim who knows the Koran by heart

I think it may be my highest non-bingo play ever. I saw that I had the word on my rack immediately, but I didn't see a place for it. I had almost put dow EFF at A1 for 27 points, when I decided to look around the board one more time. It's a good thing I did. It put the game back in my reach and I won it.

Elsewhere on the board, I had a mingo, AERATION for 59 (mingo* is Scrabble slang for a small bingo, usually less than 60 points, or so I've heard). My opponent pluralized it and bingoed with MORTISE. I was all set to slap an A in front of it for AMORTISE (I knew AMORTISE, I never heard of MORTISE until today). But the A never came out at the right time.

1 Comments

Mike Waugh said:

Looking at MORTISE, I see that my opponent played ALEC for 30 points. Using the same letter, he could have played CLEAR on 2K, hooking the A on MORTISE. It would have been 32 points. Only a 2 point difference but many more style points.

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