The plan is fulfilled!
He Who created us that we might spell must surely be pleased tonight. Not only the 51 on stage in Washington were spelling, but also myriads in the television audience and even on the Web.
Today's segment of the competition was of nearly epic length, with a total of 192 words extending over 15 rounds and 5 hours 10 minutes. Thirteen of the 25 "championship" words were called into service -- had there been 12 more, co-champions would have been declared for the first time since 1962.
In the end, Fort Worth's Samir Patel fell foul of "Roscian" and lost to San Diego's Anurag Kashyap, who spelled "appoggiatura" for the victory.
I "participated" in this year's competition in an unusual way -- for me, at least. I recently found and joined an NSB community on LiveJournal, most of whose members are ex-NSBers. One of its members invited me to take part in The Apiary, an IM chat taking place in conjunction with the ESPN broadcast. I can't see my TV while I'm on the computer, but I turned it up loud, videotaped the broadcast, and happily IMed the other Apiarians as we tried (generally pretty successfully) to spell the increasingly recondite words. The others were all much younger than I, and several of them knew some of this year's contestants personally. They also had an extensive knowledge of what words had come up in which earlier bees.
How did I do? Reasonably well. I spelled 174 words correctly and missed 18. In recent years, it seems that the "championship" words have been easier than their immediate predecessors, and this was true again, at least for me, since I got all 13 of them. In contrast, I missed 5 of the 16 words in Round 9. "Synechthran"? Not even recalling the Echthroi in Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet helped me with that "-an." I spelled it "synechthron."
But we Egglestonians are not called on to spell words always without error. There could be no bees if we did. We are called upon simply to spell as best we can. All 273 contestants fulfilled their commission worthily, as did the thousands in the audience; as, I hope, did I.
Today's segment of the competition was of nearly epic length, with a total of 192 words extending over 15 rounds and 5 hours 10 minutes. Thirteen of the 25 "championship" words were called into service -- had there been 12 more, co-champions would have been declared for the first time since 1962.
In the end, Fort Worth's Samir Patel fell foul of "Roscian" and lost to San Diego's Anurag Kashyap, who spelled "appoggiatura" for the victory.
I "participated" in this year's competition in an unusual way -- for me, at least. I recently found and joined an NSB community on LiveJournal, most of whose members are ex-NSBers. One of its members invited me to take part in The Apiary, an IM chat taking place in conjunction with the ESPN broadcast. I can't see my TV while I'm on the computer, but I turned it up loud, videotaped the broadcast, and happily IMed the other Apiarians as we tried (generally pretty successfully) to spell the increasingly recondite words. The others were all much younger than I, and several of them knew some of this year's contestants personally. They also had an extensive knowledge of what words had come up in which earlier bees.
How did I do? Reasonably well. I spelled 174 words correctly and missed 18. In recent years, it seems that the "championship" words have been easier than their immediate predecessors, and this was true again, at least for me, since I got all 13 of them. In contrast, I missed 5 of the 16 words in Round 9. "Synechthran"? Not even recalling the Echthroi in Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet helped me with that "-an." I spelled it "synechthron."
But we Egglestonians are not called on to spell words always without error. There could be no bees if we did. We are called upon simply to spell as best we can. All 273 contestants fulfilled their commission worthily, as did the thousands in the audience; as, I hope, did I.
posted by Bill Kenney at 8:30 PM
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