Spelling Bee buzz

Yesterday, while I was getting ready for my supper club (making whole wheat pizza dough, and then rolling it out and decorating it with homemade pesto, mozzarella and sundried tomatoes, and another one with crushed tomatoes and artichoke hearts and more mozz...) I was listening to the middle rounds of the National Spelling Bee on ESPN. It was sort of funny to see how ESPN made it more "exciting" ... they even did short interviews with the kids and their parents. It was cute.

Starting with Round 4 (semifinals), they had to spell words like skeuomorph, hircocervus, echinocystis, and omphaloskepsis. Yikes! These are mostly 12 and 13 year old kids! I was amazed. I thought I was a good speller - I won the spelling bee in my elementary school in 5th grade and made it to regionals... where I was tripped up by the word "platelet" (I hadn't had biology yet, I didn't know that it didn't have the "-ette" on the end! oh well..) So yesterday, I tried to spell the words along with the kids, without looking at the spelling on the tv... I think I would have been out in round 5. ;)

The winning speller, Kavya Shivashankar (she's 13!), had to spell the following in the last six rounds:
11. Caerphilly
12. wisent
13. bouquiniste
14. isagoge
15. phoresy
16. Laodicean (winner!)

Wow. I'd better go back to studying. :)

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