A good effort

BH on good form this afternoon, with her opening shot being 'aproned', which she was a bit uneasy about but which OED revealed to have been in use since at least the early seventeenth century, often but by no means always in conjunction with a material word, as in 'a leather-aproned, sweating man came to the smithy door'. The word was not huge but doubled as it was the first go plus the seven letter bonus of 50 took her to 76, establishing a solid lead. But not quite as good as my effort last summer, noticed at reference 1. Or, indeed, that at reference 2.

In the last quarter of the game I got within striking distance, but BH pulled off a late triple word while I got lumbered with both Q and Z, too late in the game to make good use of them. I took a chance with 'zit' which also turned out to be in OED, seemingly as an alternative spelling of 'sit' and not disqualified by being marked as dialect, obsolete or foreign. A bit marginal, much more so than 'aproned', but we allowed it to stand.

But it was not enough and I lost by 263 points to 297, not counting the penalty of 26 for my Q and three E's. So comfortably through the 550 barrier, but well short of the 600 barrier, breached just the once at the end of last year and noticed at reference 2.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-new-record.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/through-glass-ceiling.html.