Spelling Bee
 

Is anyone watching the preliminary rounds on ESPN today? They're showing the finals tonight on ABC (I think).

I love watching this stuff, some of these kids are such dorks though! I think all they do is sit at home and read the dictionary. I wonder if these home school kids actually learn anything else, or if their parents make them focus on winning the spelling bee.

Spelling is one of those things...you have it or you don't (and you get a really good spellchecker;) )

Although if I was a homeschool parent, that's not a bad way to go (beefing your kid up for spelling bees), those kinds get all kinds of cool crap and scholarships. If you're going to spend 18 years not working a paying job, a scholarship has to look pretty nice.

I was wondering why this is on ESPN. It would be awesome if they had Chris Berman or John Madden doing the commentary. Madden would be all, "If you're going to spell a word, you have to use the right letters!"

Because it's Entertainment Sports Programming Network— ESPN
Apparently, a spelling bee is supposed to be entertaining.;)

ESPN also broadcasts scrabble tournaments. It just doesn't get any better than this!

My friends came up with a Spelling Bee drinking game....its hilarious! And yes we're all burning in hell.

care to share the drinking game!?

I watched it with my kids and quizzed them on why they couldn't spell those words...

Because you're a bad parent ;)


Don't feel bad, most adults can't spell, much less pronounce, those words.

My drinking game would involve taking a drink every time a word has a vowel in it.

Remember that girl who screamed the letters of each word? She won the bee.

I'm such a nerd that I looked her up. She is 1997 champ Rebecca Sealfon from New York, NY. Click here to see her in action.

valkyrie, you're hilarious!

is the spelling bee a sport? because it was broadcast on espn.

winning word "ursprache"

for the first time, pinnaclesports.com, an offshore gambling site, offered bets on it, including:

will the winner be wearing glasses? will the winner be a boy or girl? will the final word have an "e" in it? how many letters in the final word? the company received $70,000 in bets.

It went something like - you pick a kid in the first round and that's your "horse" so to speak..every time your kid gets a word right, you hand out a drink. your kid loses and you finish your beer. That's the main premise of the game but there are also specific shots you have to do if something happens: a shot of Redhot when the country of orgin is asked, Yager if someone cries, etc.

Hey I was part of the national bee when I was in middle school (I just had a natural affinity to spelling). I was a competitive diver at the time too, and I was far from being a dork that spent all day reading the dictionary (maybe that's why I didn't win- haha). It was great fun doing it thought, and making a perfect verbal score on SATs and never wondering what a word means now (for the most part) doesn't hurt either.

Anyway, I too watched it last night- I love trying to spell the word before they show it. :p

Me too.

We should make this thread into a last-letter game (where the last letter in a word is the first letter in the next word). It would be a great chance for everyone to finally break out all those SAT words they studied but never got a chance to actually use in real life.

My favorite SAT word:

Ubiquitous
u·biq·ui·tous (y-bkw-ts) adj.
Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent

SOPI, start it up!

That was awesome. They were talking about that on some radio show this morning. E!

That girl actually went to high school with me, she was a year or two younger than me. She is really that socially awkward in person -- it wasn't just her being excited about the spelling bee. I know she was homeschooled until hs so maybe her parents didn't focus on the socializing aspect of her education. But she's really smart though, I think she graduated 2nd or 3rd in her class at our super competitive hs and ended up going to Princeton.