{"id":1911,"date":"2011-04-17T22:30:02","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T05:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=1911"},"modified":"2011-04-17T22:50:06","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T05:50:06","slug":"the-adult-spelling-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=1911","title":{"rendered":"Back on stage at the Adult Spelling Bee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today featured another fun, adrenaline-pumping time at the Bay Shore Church in Long Beach, during which ~35 contestants gathered to try to spell each other into oblivion.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.justinrudd.com\/adultbee.html\">National Adult Spelling Bee<\/a> awards $500 to the winner and $500 to the charity of their choice.  This time I was joined by friends Evan and Sam, which made it even more enjoyable!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=378\">Last time I made it to round 18 before failing to spell &#8220;latkes&#8221;.<\/a>  This year I managed to spell the following correctly:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>dynamic\n<li>demographic\n<li>hypothesis\n<li>disaffiliate\n<li>discomfit\n<li>flaccid\n<li>myrmidon\n<li>zydeco\n<li>jejune\n<li>nudnik\n<li>abscissa\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>At that point, we were down to four spellers left.  I misspelled &#8220;vizsla&#8221; (?!), but the three others remaining also failed to spell their words correctly, so we all survived to the next round.  I then promptly misspelled &#8220;boustrophedon&#8221; (as &#8220;boustrephedon&#8221;) and the woman after me misspelled &#8220;oriflamme&#8221; (argh, I knew that one! :) ), so we tied for third place.  <em>(Boustrophedon describes a piece that is written right-to-left and left-to-right in alternating lines.  Vizsla is some kind of dog breed.  Aie!)<\/em>  The two remaining spellers duked it out for a few more rounds until Janice Davis (a returning 2008 champ) won over Nicholas Kuefler (an amazing speller from Georgia).  The words by that point were bordering on ludicrous; the organizers were having trouble just pronouncing them.  Good job, Janice and Nicholas!<\/p>\n<p>Once again I must comment on the luck factor involved in single-elimination spelling bees.  Here are some words, assigned to other spellers, that I would have misspelled if they&#8217;d been given to me:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>emolument: a salary, fee, or profit from employment\n<li>pullulate: to breed or spread so as to become very common\n<li>vinaceous: of the color of red wine\n<li>jodhpurs: trousers for horseback riding\n<li>neoteny: the retention of juvenile features in the adult animal\n<li>chiliast: same as &#8220;millenarian&#8221; (a Christian belief)\n<li>ecesis: the successful establishment of a plant or animal species in a habitat\n<li>clerihew: a short comic or nonsensical verse, typically in two rhyming couplets with lines of unequal length and referring to a famous person\n<li>monadnock: an isolated hill or ridge\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>How would you do?  I know many people reading this are excellent spellers!<\/p>\n<p>So many words to learn.  Such a fun event!  I&#8217;m glad I got a chance to participate again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today featured another fun, adrenaline-pumping time at the Bay Shore Church in Long Beach, during which ~35 contestants gathered to try to spell each other into oblivion. The National Adult Spelling Bee awards $500 to the winner and $500 to the charity of their choice. This time I was joined by friends Evan and Sam, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1911"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1924,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}