Hello and welcome! I'm Willie Rasco. I manage a school cafeteria by day and play Scrabble by night, and I started this club in the fall of 1994 with three friends and one board, at a table in the back of the library's meeting room. Now we fill the whole room most Mondays. We have retired teachers, a mail carrier, a nurse, two preachers, a college student and one fellow who drives a truck and plays every Monday he's in town. We have members who play like they're at the kitchen table and members who play in tournaments all over the South, and they all sit down at the same tables.

I am a grandmother of five. I study word lists on my lunch break in the cafeteria office, on index cards I keep in my apron pocket, and my cooks tease me about it, and then they come ask me if TAJ is a word. (It is.)

On this page you'll find club news, what a bingo is, the lists I tell every new member to learn first, and our club rules. There's also our 1999 club ladder and a guide to your first tournament.

When and where: Every Monday, 6:00 to 8:45, in the meeting room. We have to be out by 8:55 when the library closes, so the last game starts no later than 7:55. No club on holidays when the library is closed. Bring a board if you have one. We have six club boards and four clocks.

September: No club on Labor Day, September 6, as the library was closed. We made up for it on the 13th with a full room, twenty-two players, and three people had to share a board as a threesome. Thank you to Mattie S. for the pound cake.

Congratulations to Inez B., who played her first rated tournament in August and came home with three wins and a big smile. And to Clifford H., who had the high game of the year so far at the club, 518, on August 23.

Bingo of the month for September goes to Marilyn J. for PAINTER, laid down across two double-word squares while her opponent was still writing down his last score.

Coming up: We're hoping to send a carload to a one-day tournament in Nashville this fall. See me at club if you'd like a seat.

A bingo is when you play all seven of your tiles in one turn. It earns a 50-point bonus on top of whatever the word itself scores. Our club is named for it because nothing changes a game like a bingo, and nothing separates a kitchen-table player from a club player like learning to find them.

Here's how it adds up. Say you go first and you're holding A, E, I, N, R, S and T. You lay down RETAINS across the center star, and none of the letters lands on a double-letter square:

Sixty-four points for seven one-point tiles. That's why the good players hang on to letters like E, R, S, T, A, I and N and throw back the clunkers. Those same seven letters also make NASTIER, RETINAS, RETSINA, STAINER and STEARIN, so if one doesn't fit on the board, another one might.

1. The two-letter words. Learn these first. Every one of them. They let you play alongside other words and score in two directions at once, and most games between good players are won with two-letter words, not long ones. These are all the twos in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Third Edition, which is the book we use at club. There are 96 of them. I've written them small so they fit on two index cards, the way I carry them.

Things to notice: there are no twos with C, Q, V or Z in them. The only J word is jo, and the X words are ax, ex, ox, xi and xu. If somebody plays a two-letter word that isn't on this list, challenge it.

2. Q without U. Everybody gets stuck with the Q. Here are the words that let you play it without a U. Carry these in your head and the Q stops being a ten-point punishment.

QAT is the one you'll use most. If you have an A and a T, or there's one on the board, look for it first.

3. Bingo stems. A stem is six letters that make a bingo with lots of different seventh letters. The best-known one is RETAIN. Here are some of the bingos it makes. This isn't every one, just the ones I've seen played at our club:

1. Timers. Ladder games are played on chess clocks, 25 minutes a side, the same as a tournament. If you go over, you lose 10 points for each minute or part of a minute. New members can play their first month at the practice table with no clock while they get comfortable.

2. Challenges. We play the double-challenge rule. If you think a word isn't good, say "challenge" and we look it up in the OSPD. If the word is no good, the player takes the tiles back and scores nothing for that turn. If the word is good, the person who challenged loses their next turn. So don't challenge just to be ornery.

3. Tracking tiles. You may keep track of the tiles on your scoresheet as they're played. I recommend it. There are 100 tiles in the bag, and if you know what's left, you know what your opponent might be holding. Write the letters out before the game and cross them off as they go down. It feels slow at first. Then it doesn't.

4. Keep score both ways. Both players keep both scores and check them against each other every few turns. Ladder results are turned in to me, both names on the slip.

5. Drawing. Hold the bag up at eye level or higher and look away while you draw. Count your tiles before you play.

6. Manners. Shake hands before and after. No coaching at somebody else's table. No talking about the game in progress, even to yourself. Win nicely, lose nicely. We are all here to have fun and to get better, in that order.

7. Food. Snacks at the side table only. Nothing sticky near the boards. We learned this the hard way in 1996.