Posts Tagged ‘spelling bee’
“I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia. Not because I had it, but because I couldn’t spell it.”*…
At the other end of the spectrum are the kids who make it to– and in– the Spelling Bee. Sebastian Stockman shares his unique perspective…
Every March, I get an email from Joan Lanigan at City Hall: The Binder has arrived.
The Spelling Bee words are in The Binder. I need The Binder because I’m the Pronouncer.
And so, my annual participation in the Boston Citywide Spelling Bee begins with a bit of spycraft—not the Tom-Cruise-scales-the-Burj-Khalifa type, more the George-Smiley-hands-you-a-file kind.
The handoff always takes place somewhere on my campus in between classes. Over the years, Joan has popped out of the passenger seat of an illegally parked car to hand me the nondescript white three-ring binder. She has waited for me in the rain, under an umbrella, outside my classroom building. She’s shown up in sunglasses and workout clothes, dropping The Binder off before her run. This year we met on the steps of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Joan’s not paranoid. She just does things by the book. As Program Manager at the Boston Centers for Youth and Families, Joan is the city’s point of contact between the Scripps National Spelling Bee and the several dozen public and private schools in Boston who send representatives to the regional competition. The winner of that competition receives a trophy, various wordy prizes, and travel and accommodations to the National Spelling Bee, just outside of Washington, D.C., where they’ll have their words pronounced by Dr. Jacques Bailly, the affable, unflappable LeBron James of the Bee world.
The Scripps people do not provide the word list digitally, because they want to limit sharing. It says so at the top of the first page, centered in red italics:
“Please do not give this guide to any spellers, parents or teachers.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee will provide your regional champion with study materials for the National Competition.”This is the Spelling Bee. OpSec is critical…
A proctor’s-eye view: “Confessions Of A Spelling Bee Pronouncer,” from @substockman.bsky.social in @defector.com.
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As we honor orthography, we might recall that on this date in 1988, Rageshree Ramachandran won the Scripps National Spelling Bee (correctly spelling “elegiacal”). 13 years old (and In the eighth grade) at the time, Ramachandran proceeded to race through high school in three years. At age 15, she won a $10,000 Westinghouse Science Talent Search scholarship. She started Stanford at age 16, and graduated in 1995 with both a B.S. and an M.S. She moved then to medical school at the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a Ph.D. in 2022 and an M.D. in 2023, then moved back to the Bay Area to do her residency at UCSF… where today she is a professor of clinical pathology.
“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination”*…
“share-en-shnit-uh,” from the German, meaning “the art of cutting paper into decorative designs”
Last Wednesday,285 participants 15 years old and younger took the stage in National Harbor, Maryland to recite words they’ve probably never used in conversation; the finals were held the following evening. For the third year in a row, the result was a tie; the title was shared by Nihar Janga, 11, of Austin, Texas, and Jairam Hathwar, 13, of Painted Post, N.Y., who were declared co-champions after fighting to a draw during 39 rounds of competition. Jairam’s final word in the competition was “Feldenkrais” (a trademark that refers to a system of aided body movements); Nihar’s, “gesellschaft,” (a type of social relationship).
“A lot of it is luck, to be totally honest,” says 2006 winner Kerry Close, now a 23-year-old reporter at Money Magazine. “There’s maybe a dozen, maybe more, kids who have a realistic shot of winning,” says Close. “Who actually wins comes down to pretty much who’s asked the right word.”
Ten of the final words from previous Scripps bees, and the reason why spelling them is such a feat: “Why these winning words from US National Spelling bees are so hard to spell.”
* Mark Twain
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As we ask that it be used in a sentence, we might recall that it was on this date in 1593 that poet and playwright (Shakespeare’s nearest rival at the time) Christopher Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl. Marlowe reputedly supplemented his income as a spy; in any case, he ran afoul of Queen Elizabeth’s government when, earlier in the month, his roommate, fellow playwright Thomas Kyd, was grilled by authorities. Kyd insisted that the “heretical” papers found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who was subsequently arrested, but was able to use his connections to arrange bail. While out Marlowe became involved in a fight– ostensibly over a tavern bill, but believed by many to have been a set-up– and was stabbed to death.
The 1585 portrait discovered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1953, believed to be of the 21-year-old Christopher Marlowe. The inscribed motto is “QVOD ME NVTRIT ME DESTRVIT,” “that which nourishes me destroys me.” Indeed.
“It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word”*…
The 9-15-year-olds who compete in the annual Scripps Spelling Bee tend to delight in words like “flibbertigibbet,” “onomatopoeia,” “schadenfreude,” “syzygy,” “tchotchke” and “triskaidekaphobia.” We normal humans are forced to seek help with much simpler words like “grey,” “cancelled” and “Hanukkah.” Vocativ used Google Trends data to learn which words were most frequently spellchecked in each state; along the way, they detected some interesting patterns, for instance:
Out of all the states, Idaho turned to Google for spelling assistance most often, and when it did, the state’s most Googled spelling was “antelope.” Idahoans struggled with “cevilian” [sic] and stumbled over “tongue”. On the bottom of the list of spellchecking states, the confident writers and readers of Oregon resorted to Google least often, only using it for spellchecks 28% as frequently as Idaho residents, according to Google data.
Here’s their summary chart:
Read more (and see a larger version) at “These Words Would Knock Your State Out Of the National Spelling Bee.”
* Andrew Jackson
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As we spell “spell,” we might send acerbic birthday greetings to journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, and critic Henry Louis “H. L.” Mencken; he was born on this date in 1880. Mencken is the author of the philological work The American Language, and is remembered for his journalism (e.g., his coverage of the Scopes Trial) and for his cultural criticism (and editorship of American Mercury— published by Alfred Knopf, also born on this date, but 12 years after Mencken ) in which he championed such writers as D.H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, and Sherwood Anderson. But “H.L.” is probably most famous for the profusion of pointed one-liners and adages that leavened his work…
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom. . . [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
And on spelling:
“Correct” spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
H.L. Mencken, photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Casting a spell: spelling “aghast”…
Don’t be left out; join in the fun! Play Oxford Dictionaries On-Line Spelling Bee!
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As we chant to ourselves “‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’,” we might send mysterious birthday greetings to writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and Christian humanist Dorothy L. Sayers; she was born on this date in 1893. While she’s surely best remembered as a crime novelist– the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey– she considered her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Penguin Classics, in three volumes, e.g., here) to be her best work.
Transmuting base (instincts) into gold…
The folks at 826LA (an institution inspired, it seems, by 826 Valencia in SF) have performed an alchemical feat: they’ve made cheating good!
click here for a larger view, and sign-up info
One simply forms a team, raises tax-deductible contributions to 826LA– then spends that loot on “cheats” (explained here) in the contest. A good time is had by all– and 826LA gets to continue its work “helping students across Los Angeles finish all their homework, write their first books, and become all-around more confident writers.”
As we practice recognizing diphthongs by ear, we might recall that it was on this date in 1811 that Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron) returned from the two-year trip that was the inspiration for Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812)… as a result of the publication of which, Byron became a major pop star– whose taste, manners, and fashion were all widely imitated. Quoth the startled poet: “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”
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