Being All That They Can Bee
On June 1st and 2nd, 273 kids aged 9 to 14 will be in a state of consonant vigilance as they try to disemvowel one another in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, held in Washington, D.C.
In order to figure out whom to bet on-I mean, root for-I checked out the list of contestants on the official National Spelling Bee Website. I immediately noticed some final twosomes that I'd sure like to see (the following is all in good fun, in case you personally know any of these kids, or their families, or their lawyers):
> The most clear-cut, unambiguous result will come from a final pairing Wyoming's Jennifer Black versus Pennsylvania's Matt White;
> The "Great Detectives" face-off: L. Sherlock Davis of the Virgin Islands versus Sydney Matlock of Texas;
> "The Witch Is Dead" finale: Michigan's Jamie Ding against Saskatchewan's Angi Dong.
For my Hoosier readers looking for a homegrown speller to root for, there are 15 contestants from Indiana, including kids with wonderfully syncopated names like Vaibhav Vavilala, a 10-year-old from Indianapolis, and William Waitman Weitzel, age 13, from Evansville, who ESPN sportscasters have already nicknamed "Triple-Dub."
What's ESPN got to do with the National Spelling Bee? Well, as it has for several years, the network will feature live coverage of the Bee's final rounds. In an effort to attract more viewers, some new reality TV elements are being introduced to the competition. The kids will not only have to spell a word correctly to advance to the next round, they'll also have to sing a song containing that word for Paula Abdul, and THEN be chosen to receive a rose. From Donald Trump.
I don't know if it's captured anywhere in the historical record, but I actually won the sixth grade spelling bee at Lowell Middle School. It meant a lot to me, even though I was a junior in college at the time.
I only remember one thing from that day: while waiting for the event to begin, a classmate whom I'll call "Roberta Grant" (since that's her name) said she reeeeaaallly didn't want to bee there. She said she would spell her first word wrong so she could sit down. I didn't think she'd do it, especially when her first word was "acorn." But sure enough, she spelled it "a-c-r-o-n." And with a big smile on her face, she got to sit down. Six years later, Roberta graduated from Lowell High with a perfect 4.0 grade average. True story.
From the Lowell bee, I went on to a competition in Crown Point. I vividly remember the word that doomed me that day — "facility." I searched around even the remotest regions of my brainpan for a word that even faintly resembled this, found zilch, and wound up spelling it "a-c-r-o-n."
I don't know how long Lowell has been subjecting its sixth graders to spelling bees, but this week's National Bee is the 78th. The first one was held in 1925. Yeah, that's more than 78 years ago, but there were no competitions during the war years of 1943, '44 and '45, due to strict nationwide rationing of adjectives.
The first National Bee winner was 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser from Louisville, Kentucky, who won by spelling "gladiolus." And in an amazing coincidence, the 2004 winner, David Tidmarsh of South Bend, Indiana, took the title by spelling "autochthonous" — a word made up entirely of discarded letters discovered in the bottom of the trophy cup awarded to Frank Neuhauser in 1925!
"Autochthonous" — with 13 letters — is tied with six other words for longest winning word in Bee history. Just about all of us routinely use the other 13-letter words in our everyday lives, but just to see how much punishment my spell-check can take, here they are: chiaroscurist; vivisepulture; staphylococci; interlocutory; crustaceology; deteriorating.
Hey, how about we have a little fun with these words? I promise to immortalize you in a future column by mentioning your name — spelled correctly, of course — if you send me an e-mail using all these words properly. In the same sentence.
# # #
E-M-A-I-L-M-E. E-mail me, at takefiveT5@yahoo.com
In order to figure out whom to bet on-I mean, root for-I checked out the list of contestants on the official National Spelling Bee Website. I immediately noticed some final twosomes that I'd sure like to see (the following is all in good fun, in case you personally know any of these kids, or their families, or their lawyers):
> The most clear-cut, unambiguous result will come from a final pairing Wyoming's Jennifer Black versus Pennsylvania's Matt White;
> The "Great Detectives" face-off: L. Sherlock Davis of the Virgin Islands versus Sydney Matlock of Texas;
> "The Witch Is Dead" finale: Michigan's Jamie Ding against Saskatchewan's Angi Dong.
For my Hoosier readers looking for a homegrown speller to root for, there are 15 contestants from Indiana, including kids with wonderfully syncopated names like Vaibhav Vavilala, a 10-year-old from Indianapolis, and William Waitman Weitzel, age 13, from Evansville, who ESPN sportscasters have already nicknamed "Triple-Dub."
What's ESPN got to do with the National Spelling Bee? Well, as it has for several years, the network will feature live coverage of the Bee's final rounds. In an effort to attract more viewers, some new reality TV elements are being introduced to the competition. The kids will not only have to spell a word correctly to advance to the next round, they'll also have to sing a song containing that word for Paula Abdul, and THEN be chosen to receive a rose. From Donald Trump.
I don't know if it's captured anywhere in the historical record, but I actually won the sixth grade spelling bee at Lowell Middle School. It meant a lot to me, even though I was a junior in college at the time.
I only remember one thing from that day: while waiting for the event to begin, a classmate whom I'll call "Roberta Grant" (since that's her name) said she reeeeaaallly didn't want to bee there. She said she would spell her first word wrong so she could sit down. I didn't think she'd do it, especially when her first word was "acorn." But sure enough, she spelled it "a-c-r-o-n." And with a big smile on her face, she got to sit down. Six years later, Roberta graduated from Lowell High with a perfect 4.0 grade average. True story.
From the Lowell bee, I went on to a competition in Crown Point. I vividly remember the word that doomed me that day — "facility." I searched around even the remotest regions of my brainpan for a word that even faintly resembled this, found zilch, and wound up spelling it "a-c-r-o-n."
I don't know how long Lowell has been subjecting its sixth graders to spelling bees, but this week's National Bee is the 78th. The first one was held in 1925. Yeah, that's more than 78 years ago, but there were no competitions during the war years of 1943, '44 and '45, due to strict nationwide rationing of adjectives.
The first National Bee winner was 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser from Louisville, Kentucky, who won by spelling "gladiolus." And in an amazing coincidence, the 2004 winner, David Tidmarsh of South Bend, Indiana, took the title by spelling "autochthonous" — a word made up entirely of discarded letters discovered in the bottom of the trophy cup awarded to Frank Neuhauser in 1925!
"Autochthonous" — with 13 letters — is tied with six other words for longest winning word in Bee history. Just about all of us routinely use the other 13-letter words in our everyday lives, but just to see how much punishment my spell-check can take, here they are: chiaroscurist; vivisepulture; staphylococci; interlocutory; crustaceology; deteriorating.
Hey, how about we have a little fun with these words? I promise to immortalize you in a future column by mentioning your name — spelled correctly, of course — if you send me an e-mail using all these words properly. In the same sentence.
# # #
E-M-A-I-L-M-E. E-mail me, at takefiveT5@yahoo.com
posted by Don Stuart at 10:39 AM
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