{"id":3536,"date":"2014-03-09T23:43:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T06:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=3536"},"modified":"2014-03-09T23:43:38","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T06:43:38","slug":"back-to-the-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=3536","title":{"rendered":"Back to the bee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I made my annual pilgrimage to the Adult Spelling Bee<\/a> in Long Beach. I saw several familiar faces amongst the other competitors as I climbed onto the hot, stuffy stage and prepared to do battle with the dictionary.<\/p>\n

The first four rounds were pretty approachable:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. fusty\n
  2. nimrod\n
  3. solstice\n
  4. homily\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    On the 5th round, I was given “hawkshaw,” a word I’d never heard before. I asked for a definition<\/a> and was told, “a detective.” Hmm. Was it “hockshaw” or “hawkshaw”? I asked for the language of origin and got “U.S. slang.” That clinched it. I figured “hawk” (hunt) was a more likely metaphor for a detective than “hock” (sell) and went with “hawkshaw.” And it was right!<\/p>\n

    (It turns out that hawkshaw is a reference to a comic strip character<\/a> named Hawkshaw the Detective.)<\/p>\n

    On the 6th round, I got “paludal.” Yeah, if you’ve heard of this word before, kudos to you! The definition is “of or relating to a swamp; marshy.” I hesitated. Was it “pa-” or “pe-“? “Pelagic” is a word that refers to the ocean, which is watery. Was that close enough to marshy? What would a “pal-” prefix mean? <\/p>\n

    I ended up going for “palludal,” which was close, but no cigar. Later I learned that “palus” is Latin for “marsh.” Well, now I know!<\/p>\n

    That round was quite brutal, and by going out at that point I tied for 6th place with many other spellers (the same place as last year<\/a>!). Some interesting and challenging words from the remaining rounds (an asterisk means I would have misspelled it) were:<\/p>\n

    \n
      \n
    • antimacassar\n
    • primeval\n
    • tetchy\n
    • sanguine\n
    • prurient\n
    • *maquillage\n
    • costive\n
    • reify\n
    • turpitude\n
    • basenji\n
    • degust\n
    • phalanx\n
    • *divagate\n
    • prevenient\n
    • contumacious — the winning word!\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      I’m already looking forward to next year. :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Today I made my annual pilgrimage to the Adult Spelling Bee in Long Beach. I saw several familiar faces amongst the other competitors as I climbed onto the hot, stuffy stage and prepared to do battle with the dictionary. The first four rounds were pretty approachable: fusty nimrod solstice homily On the 5th round, I […]<\/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\/3536"}],"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=3536"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3542,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536\/revisions\/3542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}