Last night was the all Orange County Spelling Bee semi-finals (for grades 6, 7, and 8). It's a written test, so all the kids have the same words -- 20 "regular" and 2 "bonus" tie-breakers. Out of 150 kids, only 2 spelled 'em all right. Geneva misspelled only one of the bonus words, everyone else misspelled one or more of the regular words. This essentially put her in third place in the room, I reckon. The bonus word she missed was "edentulous", meaning "lacking teeth". Nobody in the room ever heard of it, but apparently two kids guessed better than Geneva (or I) did.
They cut it off at 17 words spelled right, so there's 55 kids that'll be coming to the oral finals on Saturday morning. Two years ago, she came in 9th, and got $50 for her trouble. Last year she choked, and misspelled "slaughter", just 'cuz of nerves. Hopefully, this year she'll be a little less stressed.
Personally, I think these written tests are better gauges of who's the best speller (if such a thing is worth determining, especially these days). Mainly it seems more fair for all the kids get the same words. And it's easier to spell on paper than just reciting letters in the air. When is spelling out loud a necessary skill? Not to mention the stress of standing up in front of a crowd to do it.
If you're curious, here's the whole list: quizmaster, charcoal, lettuce, transaction, shale, irregular, aloof, prehistory, nozzle, diagonal, liturgy, optimism, casualty, vanilla, foolocracy, atrophy, azalea, recyclable, atoll, euphonious, with edentulous and predecessor as bonus words. (By the way, even Word's spelling dictionary has never heard of "foolocracy", but apparently it's in the Webster's they use to judge.)
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