Wednesday, May 31, 2006

REST YOUR BRAINS: So the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee has retired for a lunch break. Round 3 begins at 2 pm. Thank the heavens. The pressure of watching those enormous words load and reload on my computer screen as each competitor's result is announced requires me to have a break.

In the interim, I thought I'd share with you some interesting Bee stats (which I've borrowed directly from the Scripps Howard web site):

There were 275 spellers (139 boys and 136 girls) at the start of the Bee. That's the greatest number of spellers in the history of the event.

There is only one nine year old spelling this year. The majority of spellers are 13 and 14 years old. A stunning 71% of the spellers attend public school. Score one for the public school system! 13% are home schooled. And 13% attend private or parochial school.

Five-Year Repeaters (2):
Speller 99, John Louis Tandy Tamplin
Speller 147, Katharine Close

Four-Year Repeaters (3):
Speller 140, Rajiv Tarigopula
Speller 238, Samir Sudhir Patel
Speller 239, Nidharshan Subra Anandasivam

Three-Year Repeaters (13):
Speller 12, Tia Natasha-Elizabeth Thomas
Speller 22, Kendra Yoshinaga
Speller 39, Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan
Speller 72, Bonny Jain
Speller 78, Austin William Hoke
Speller 83, Michael Shane Paynter
Speller 123, Elliott P. Orr
Speller 128, Nilesh K. Raval
Speller 153, Matthew C. Evans
Speller 180, Saryn Rebecca Hooks
Speller 208, Charley Allegar
Speller 240, Anjay V. Ajodha
Speller 267, Andy Wade

I gotta admit, I kinda hope one of the 5-peaters wins. I think after you've spent 5 years at the Bee, you either win or you spend the rest of your life in a closet, rocking back and forth and mumbling letters of the alphabet to yourself.

I want to thank Adam and everyone at ALOTT5MA for inviting me to join them on the Spelling Bee coverage! More as it develops!

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