A Competition

Ericeticolous. Geistlich. Melopoeia. Phthisology. Yttriferous. Maieutic. Saccharolytic. Schwannoma. Chionablepsia. A new language you may ask? Au contraire mon ami. These our words from our very own Merriam-Webster dictionary. And these arcane tongue-twisters were just a few gems asked by Dr. Jacques Bailly of the Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals Competition on ESPN of mostly 14 year olds (some were younger omg) to spell correctly this past week on ESPN.

278 finalists from around the world started the competition to crown the country's best speller. When I caught up with the proceedings, only 6 eighth graders remained. Three boys, three girls. All American via India, Russia, Jamaica and Israel. None from FW Gregory Elementary School in New Orleans or Mann Elementary School in St. Louis. Another reason to keep the immigration gates open to those who are gifted, come from supportive families and want to succeed in America. As I tell our kids, if you want to succeed in this country adopt an immigrant mentality and willingness to work like the dickens.

As the words became harder, the contestants started to falter. Arvind, third place finisher last year as a 11 year old and a darling of the adoring crowd for writing the word in the palm of his hand before he speaks, failed on the word schwamerei. His parents were there to comfort him. The 12 year old didn't look all that upset. He knows he has two more years of eligiblity left. An interviewer asked Arvind after the contest, "how do you prepare for the competition?" Arvind responded without hesitation, "I read 53 pages of the dictionary a night." In my English dictionary there are over 2,200 pages, so, per my calcs young Arvind spends 42 days reading the dictionary. Arvin added, " I've probably spent over 600 hours studying the dictionary." That's superhuman. Does the kid ever sleep, eat or have fun? For us mortals, try reading one page of the dictionary and, more importantly, try to remember what you read.

The final two contestants for the crown were Stuti and Snigdha. Two lovely girls from Florida and California respectively. Stuti missed one letter in a polysyllabic brain tease. While Snigdha, her name in Sanskrit means "smooth like honey", nailed her final word guet-apens to win the competition. I checked on that word. It's not in my English dictionary. Oh yes, how silly of me, it's language of origin is French, has three alternate pronounciations and has two parts of speech. I guess Snigdha reads the French dictionary as well. Hear that Arvind for next year?

Congrats to all for another brilliant show of genius and fun.

By the way, the moderator mentioned earlier, Dr. Jacques Bailly, won the National Spelling Bee in 1980.