I wasn’t going to blog about last night’s spelling bee. But a colleague nudged me, so I will briefly tell our tale of woe.
I was one of three Gazette participants in last night’s spelling bee to raise money for the Catherine McAuley Center. Eleven teams of adults matched our spelling (and speaking) abilities against each other in a spelling bee mercifully not shown on ESPN.
The Gazette team, winners last year (before I showed up; coincidense?), failed to defend our championship. We also looked pretty ridiculous, wearing paper carrier sacks and pressmen’s hats folded out of newspapers.
We congratulate the Shuttleworth and Ingersoll team that won: Doug Oelschlaeger, Jennifer Rinden and Elaine Surrett. (Yeah, lawyers beat journalists; we’re still stinging from that.) They beat Rockwell Collins in the final showdown, nailing hirundine (a word I could have spelled, not that I’m bitter) for the championship.
The best I can say for our team was that we lasted into the final five (and that we beat the Hoopla team, so we would maintain the upper hand in office trash talking; in case you’re curious, Hoopla whiffed on rosaceous).
Competing at Xavier High School, we worried that the fix might be in when a team from the Sisters of Mercy was actually asked to spell ordination. But we outlasted the nuns. Haven’t figured out a way to claim that the lawyers had it fixed, but we’re considering slapping them with some sort of writ.
We nailed some easy words like tutelage, catechism, adjournment and privilege (I could only remember two, but teammates Richard Pratt and Molly Rossiter refreshed my fading memory). And then we tripped over tragedienne.
It was interesting how often teams would huddle and get the right word right, then step up to the microphone and spell it incorrectly. One team that huddled right in front of us spelled unilateral correctly right away in the huddle, then the speller stepped to the microphone and, speaking swiftly and confidently, left out the first l and a. The legal eagles almost lost on macropterous (sigh, another word I could have nailed) and you could tell from Rinden’s wince as soon as Oelschlaeger gave the wrong letter that she knew how to spell it. (When the bee narrows to two, you aren’t automatically eliminated by a mistake. The other team needs to get two consecutive words right, and Rockwell Collins whiffed, giving the lawyers new life.)
Same deal with us on tragedienne. We knew how to spell it. Really. Typical newspaper folks, though. We type better than we talk.
Yes, I do know how to spell coincidence. Was just checking to see if you would catch it. And I can spell tragedienne, too. Really. And weep. And gnash. And pout.
The Buttry Diary 
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