Thursday, May 28, 2009

WE ARE FEARLESS SPELLERS WHO LOVE SCARY WORDS: And so the National Spelling Bee semifinals begin with 41 spellers out of the original 293. 23 boys and 18 girls remain, including four 4-time repeaters -- Josephine Kao, Kavya Shivashankar, Vaibhav Vavilala and Keiko Bridwell. As a reminder, the semifinals are live on ESPN from 10 am to 1 pm, and the final rounds will be shown live tonight at 8 pm eastern on ABC,with your favorite host, Tom Bergeron.
Round One of the Semifinals starts... now.

Update #1 Nice work from Ms Park from Little Rock. No fear! (The Pathetic Earthling)

Update #2 MEER-e-ARK, a commander of ten thousand in ancient Greece, for Ms. Kao. Deft. My two in this competition have already passed round one. I find that when I actually know a word in this competition, half the time I learned it from reading Dungeons & Dragons modules. I'm pretty sure that an 8th Level fighter was a MEER-e-ARK. Gary Gygax could apparently stump any abridged English dictionary. (The Pathetic Earthling)

Update #3: Flashback -- after starting easy last year, this was the Canadian Bloodbath round, with all seven of our NttN headed home in a row. We said it was "the worst Canadian disaster since Glass Tiger broke up," "the worst Canadian disaster since Thicke of the Night," "must be like what it was like when the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets left the country," "like when Neil Young moved to Topanga Canyon," "like when Vince Carter started mailing it in so that he could get traded to New Jersey" and "like Eric Lindros insisting to the Nordiques that he wanted to play for the Flyers."

Shonda wrote: "The Canadians fall, the Canadians fall, the Canadians fall like trees. It's a Spelling Bee Battle Field -- these poor Canadians rushing to the microphone only to be beaten back with a horrifying ding. Were they not prepared for the rigors of TV? The joy of ESPN? Because these words did not seem particularly hard to me. But just like that, we have lost SIX CANADIANS IN A ROW. ALL THE CANADIANS ARE GONE. It's tragic. Oh, Canada..." (Adam)

Update #4 O Canada! Candians go trois-for-trois. In comments, Undercover Black Man notes the increasing use of "funny" sentences as examples. WIth the earlier BEHK-mes-UHR -- a person who is overly officious in his demonstration of knowledge -- the sentence was "When Kid Rock left the club, he had a BEHK-mes-UHR on each arm, telling him he should practice more." Seems that the use of these sentences has increased quite a bit in the last few years. But by now, they ought to be able to hire a better comedy writer to gin these sentences up. They're mostly dreadful.(The Pathetic Earthling

Update # 5 UHR-gay-see-a – behavior – four-timer Ms. Shivashankar knocks it out of the park.(The Pathetic Earthling)

Update #6 Every year I turn on the Spelling Bee here on the trading desk. Every year people make fun of it for a few minutes, and within 10 minutes everyone is watching intently and cheering. This year is no exception. (Kim)

Update #7 Here comes our nine-year old, Mr. Hathwar. PHO-dee-ent – something fitted for digging or burrowing … and gets nicked! Next year, I trust! (The Pathetic Earthling)

Update #8 These kids are thirteen-ish and of varying height. You think Scripps or ESPN could invest in a telescoping microphone(The Pathetic Earthling)

Update #9 So The Leader once again trails The Jewish World. Isn't it always so? Meanwhile, Shonda favorite Bridwell, a follower of Lost, apparently, helps kill Jacob at Locke's behest. (Isaac)

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