BIRDIES

I was going back over some games to reconstruct my Bird Bingo Life List, when I noticed a tournament game where Ben played bIRDIES against me. The OSPD4 defines it in golf terms, but I think I can claim it as a bird word.

It's too far back for me to remember much about it, but here's what I said about the game at the time:

...So I went into the first game with a "damn the torpedoes" type of attitude. If I was going to do well playing against players who I thought had better word knowledge than me, I would have to play aggressively. Thus I played a big fat phoney for my first bingo, AUXINES* (UNISEX and AUXINS are good). It stayed on the board. Ben played bIRDIES to take the lead late in the game. But I luckily drew a Z late in the game and played ZOOEY, a new word, for 34 points and went out on the next turn. Ben's unplayed tiles gave me 12 points to win by 9. I had just defeated the top-rated player in the division.