Thursday, May 29, 2014

ROUND SIX:  As we move into the next round, I still have the odd sense that words seem...dare I say easy?

I want to remind everyone that because of that hotly debated rule change that occurred last year, the spellers now only spell through Round Six (remember the good old days where we went round after round after round?) after their scores from the written test are added in to determine which spellers become Finalists.  It's weird and feels not completely fair to me but I still don't fully understand it or why the Bee chose to make this change but it's happening so we're going with it.

The words are getting a bit crueler.  Losing on siriasis isn't going make anyone feel good.  It means sunstroke.  Poor Faaris Khan. We also lose Mark Kivimaki on Ananke.

Here comes Sriram Hathwar -- this is his 5th time at the Bee.  Last year, he placed 3rd.    He's another child (like Vanya) that we've watched grow up on this Bee stage.  His word quatrefoil doesn't feel like a big deal but I feel for Sai Vishudhi Chandrasekhar who we lose on induciae.  In her interview, Sai is breezy and cheerful and determined to return next year.  I definitely want to see her again.

10:00 am PST:  As this round marches on, I'm mostly sad about the fact that most of these kids are going to make it through.  And I would like to see them battle it out to the finish.  Instead of being eliminated off screen by a computer test they took earlier.  Which suggests that, in some ways, their fates were decided before they even stepped on this stage...



The last speller of the round is Tea Freeman-Susskind who has to spell a cheese.  You heard me.  A CHEESE.   I feel confused and sad and cheated as camembert ends the Semifinal round and we wait for a test to tell us who our Finalists are...

But I do want to cheer and congratulate all those kids who stood and spelled and fought for brainiacs everywhere.  Yay for intelligence!

UPDATED TO ADD:  Our finalists have been announced and for me the greatest shock is that VANYA SHIVASHANKAR IS NOT ON THE LIST!!

110 comments:

  1. Adam B.12:04 PM

    Agreed. Harlequinade, really? That's a farce.

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  2. Come on. Vaporetto is FAR too easy. Or maybe they think kids have never thought about Venice?

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  3. Marsha12:10 PM

    I love that Alia has no poker face at all.

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  4. BeeFan12:10 PM

    With the vocab test cutoff looming, this afternoon just seems pointless, somehow.

    They can only be eliminated. They can't really "advance", not yet.

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  5. Catherine Cojocaru12:11 PM

    Yeah...these are still easy. Which I guess is kinder to the kids at first, because they have more face time and less of a chance of embarrassment on TV. But that test last night must have been brutal in order to get down to 12 after these rounds.

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  6. Yeah, there has been no step up in difficulty in this round. Perhaps they made a deliberate decision to skew more to the written test.

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  7. Adam B.12:12 PM

    Hermeneutics? COME ON.

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  8. Catherine Cojocaru12:12 PM

    HAHAHA I just said that exact thing out loud.

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  9. meco199912:12 PM

    Is this really the last oral round this morning? THese words are way too easy. I guess the written test is going to be cutting a lot of them down. Shame.

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  10. Adam B.12:13 PM

    Etymology? It's the last name of a foam-loving Top Chef competitor who NO ONE LIKED.

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  11. Catherine Cojocaru12:14 PM

    OR, if the test wasn't that hard, we could end up with a surprise 7th round...unlikely with this new schedule of rounds, but it happened in 2008 and the realization of what was happening still haunts me.

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  12. meco199912:16 PM

    "Shivashankars, the first family of spelling." I think the Goldsteins (Amy, JJ, etc.) could disagree about that :).

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  13. Marsha12:16 PM

    It just kills me that the vast majority of these words are not that hard, and then there are a few that are awful.

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  14. Marsha12:17 PM

    Heh - I'd forgotten that.

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  15. Past bee parent12:17 PM

    3 time past bee mom--vocab ruined it for me. The kids who study know the meanings, but when you have to spell a word that's never been in a bee before, a "surprise" word, by the seat of your pants-that's a spelling bee.

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  16. Adam C.12:19 PM

    And now the Watch ESPN app is on the fritz. What WON'T ESPN do to ruin this?

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  17. Marsha12:19 PM

    Paul Keaton is adorable. Soemthing about his face is making me imagine that he's the son of Mallory and Skippy (because of course Skippy would have taken her last name).

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  18. Catherine Cojocaru12:22 PM

    PSORIASIS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME

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  19. meco199912:22 PM

    PSORIASIS?? Oh...siriasis.

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  20. Catherine Cojocaru12:23 PM

    Oh thank god it was a homonym.

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  21. Marsha12:23 PM

    But it means sunstroke - which means it's a different word, right?

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  22. That's rough.

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  23. Catherine Cojocaru12:23 PM

    But still...tough break for him :(

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  24. victoria12:25 PM

    Whoa, I had no idea that had ever happened in a national spelling bee!


    I never did spelling bees, but I did do other academic competitions, and occasionally weird situations happen that have to be resolved through ad hoc "let's just try to figure this out within the rules as fairly as we can" improvisation. And one of the crappy parts of that is that some personalities do well with that and can roll with the punches and other people don't, and that has *absolutely nothing* to do with how prepared you are to do well in whatever the competition is testing under normal circumstances.

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  25. meco199912:26 PM

    Yeah, like parseval...ugh!

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  26. Catherine Cojocaru12:29 PM

    Quatrefoil...really...

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  27. Adam C.12:30 PM

    I don't want to say I learned this word in Montessori preschool, but....

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  28. BeeFan12:31 PM

    In the National Marbles competition one year, a kid shot at a marble and it split in two, half remaining in place and the other half shooting out of the ring (which is how you score in marbles).

    What to do? The rules didn't cover it. It had never happened. Nobody had thought of it.

    On the spot, they decided he'd get to shoot at the remaining half again. If he shot that half-marble out of the ring, it would count as a made shot. He did it.

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  29. I appreciate the work that the commentators must have done to learn how to say all the spellers' (and their parents') names correctly. Some of them can be tough!

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  30. Marsha12:33 PM

    Oh, Sai - that's a hard loss. Love her. Love the braids, love the smile. And, of course, love the standing ovation.

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  31. Catherine Cojocaru12:34 PM

    They sincerely tried my last name at least, which is the most I can ask for really.

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  32. Where is our much-loved bloodbath round?

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  33. meco199912:36 PM

    Ugh..interviewing kids after they lose, awkward and painful.

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  34. Yes, so much so. Although it only makes me love them more when they handle it as gracefully as Sai. Still, I'd just as soon not see it at all.

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  35. Catherine Cojocaru12:37 PM

    Also, where are the Canadians? Did they really all get eliminated from last night's cutoff?

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  36. BeeFan12:38 PM

    Um, so ... what is the correct pronunciation of your name?

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  37. Yeah, they haven't been that great lately.

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  38. There's a pronunciation guide handed out (I have a copy). But, um, the "Shareem Hathwar," what was that?

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  39. Catherine Cojocaru12:41 PM

    Haha, "co - jo - car - oo." Slight emphasis on the "co" but it's small. They usually swapped some vowel sounds around.

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  40. Marsha12:44 PM

    Given that there have only been a few interviews, and they've all been with kids as graceful with it as Sai and Jae, perhaps they are only doing it with kids who are completely willing and able.

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  41. Catherine Cojocaru12:46 PM

    I love Kate Miller. One of my new faves.

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  42. I actually think this year's "sideline reporter" is worse than last year's. We got a moderate improvement in the commentary booth, which is good, but down on the floor? Ugh.

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  43. BeeFan12:47 PM

    I thought the emphasis was on the third syllable (probably because that's how the NSB commentators said it) but now I know!

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  44. meco199912:48 PM

    I almost felt like Jae was gonna start crying at one point.

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  45. Related to Adele Dazeem?

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  46. Catherine Cojocaru12:52 PM

    The emphasis there isn't entirely incorrect either - my American family says it differently than my Romanian family too. As long as all the vowel sounds are correct, I don't really care haha.

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  47. Am now dreading this cutdown so much.

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  48. Catherine Cojocaru12:56 PM

    Oh yeah...I remember looking around after round 6 ended and thinking, "oh okay...they said roughly 12, and there are only 18 of us, so they have to take us all, right?" and then Mary Brooks announced round 7 and we all looked at each other in horror - it still wasn't over.

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  49. meco199912:59 PM

    I get the feeling that the next round will be the evil lawnmower round...I hope.

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  50. Marsha1:01 PM

    Agreed. She has so much joy up there, and that hair! The hair I have wanted all my life!

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  51. CAMEMBERT? Really?

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  52. Marsha1:02 PM

    There is no next round. That's the awful part of this. They will announce the TV finalists based on these two rounds and the test.

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  53. Marsha1:02 PM

    CAMEMBERT?!?!?!

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  54. Devin McCullen1:02 PM

    If you're not following ScrippsBee on Twitter, they just defined pelisse as "a long cloak or coat made of fun". Heh.

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  55. Catherine Cojocaru1:03 PM

    This cutdown is going to be ROUGH

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  56. meco19991:03 PM

    Cut from 31 to 12 in a faceless, digital point computation? This sucks.

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  57. Marsha1:04 PM

    There is no next round until the TV tonight. That's the awful part.

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  58. Jacob Devine1:04 PM

    Could go down to as few as 9. (ugh)

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  59. Marsha1:06 PM

    Sorry - Disqus is doing something weird with my comments. I also see that you meant that you hoped there would be another round, so just ignore me. I so agree with you. LET THEM SPELL!

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  60. BeeFan1:06 PM

    Sort of like a baseball team winning its division and missing the playoffs because they failed a written test on the infield fly rule.

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  61. victoria1:10 PM

    List of finalists is up here: http://public.spellingbee.com/public/results/2014/finishers/html. No Vanya, no Yasir, no Shayley. Wow.

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  62. Marsha1:10 PM

    Yay Kate Miller!

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  63. Marsha1:10 PM

    Yay Jamaica!

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  64. That one gave me goosebumps when he announced it. SO excited.

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  65. Jacob just reminded me far too much of me at that age.

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  66. Adam C.1:12 PM

    Stunning.

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  67. Poor Vanya's face. Of course they cut straight to her.

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  68. Charles1:15 PM

    It's really strange to me that 19 of the nation's best spellers lost the National Spelling Bee without actually misspelling a word on stage--and the ease of the words in these last two rounds makes it worse. These kids could have spelled much more difficult words correctly. They didn't get a chance to show just how good they are.

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  69. Catherine Cojocaru1:18 PM

    Super excited about Kate and Tajaun (Jamaica). Shocked about Vanya...I don't even know what to say. Also super proud and excited for Sam Pereles because he's being coached by my former coach, Jeff Kirsch.

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  70. Nearly 200 spellers have been eliminated this week without missing a word on stage.

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  71. meco19991:24 PM

    And a few of those quite possibly didn't misspell any words on stage OR on the computerized test(s) due to the big vocab element.

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  72. meco19991:27 PM

    Me too...

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  73. meco19991:28 PM

    Jamaica almost always pulls through. They're amazing with their consistency.

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  74. meco19991:31 PM

    I totally agree.

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  75. Your perspective is really important here, Cat, because obviously the rest of us just wanted to see them spell at least more round and you've been through that one-more-round shock. How hard do you think they'd have taken it if they'd had a Round 7 just now?

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  76. Ha, there were others even before us. :) The Kerwins, for example! It's funny how across generations, certain families are forgotten.

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  77. Hey, we're not all bad. :)

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  78. victoria1:36 PM

    As a knitter I think she'll be my sentimental favorite this evening. I have a feeling my kiddo will be all into her too -- she always roots for one of the girls.

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  79. Catherine Cojocaru1:45 PM

    I think they first would have been shocked, but maybe not with the same horror we had, because another round in this style (adding to a cumulative score) could've helped kids with not-so-perfect test scores. The general feeling of the kids I was with when we had that extra round sprung on us was, "yay we survived - wait, we have to tackle ANOTHER word?" In those days (and yours too, Amy), it was either get eliminated or survive equally - none of this "we both survived the round but you may advance and I may not" business.

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  80. BeeFan1:48 PM

    Weren't there five Blacklocks who qualified? Though only Evelyn (runner-up in 2003) ever came close to winning.

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  81. BeeFan1:53 PM

    They really need to re-think how they do this.

    My suggestion that they split the original 281 into groups that run simultaneously is available for free. Not that it's an original idea. It's done in some regional bees.

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  82. BeeFan2:00 PM

    Didn't you tell us at ALOTT5MA one year that you were a pronouncer at the North-South Bee? How do they do it there? All spelling elimination or is there a computerized or written part? Do they start with simultaneous groups or is it one big group?



    (I know, they're not on TV)

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  83. Adam C.2:05 PM

    I dunno - she basically only asked variants on the "what went through your mind when you got that word?" question. I still don't like the concept of post-elimination interviews of the kids, but these weren't horrendous.

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  84. Genevieve2:06 PM

    I was wondering that too! Oh, for the Canadians of yesteryear.

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  85. Adam B.2:07 PM

    A few years ago, IIRC, CanSpell's budget dropped, so there are now only two Canadians per year in this competition.

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  86. Catherine Cojocaru2:13 PM

    I was! It was some years ago, so I don't remember a ton of specifics but all the kids took a written test beforehand at once. Then there was a cutoff that I unfortunately don't remember the threshold of, and then there was a regular bee made up of those who made the cutoff.

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  87. meco19992:18 PM

    How could ESPN broadcast bees running simultaneously? Maybe have different "feeds" on ESPN3 for group 1, group 2, etc.?

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  88. BeeFan2:25 PM

    Sizable hotels have many large meeting rooms.

    The regional bee I've seen did the split groups in school classrooms. About 25 to a group. Hotel meeting rooms can handle much more than that.



    As for ESPN, I don't know. Maybe it could be streamed on youtube or something. This would be the very earliest rounds.
    I could do without the commentary. Just point a camera at the microphone and let it run.

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  89. Also, you have the issue of how you select groups--randomly? Geographically? Alphabetically?

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  90. Marsha2:33 PM

    http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/05/spelling-bee-rules-shenanigans

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  91. BeeFan2:33 PM

    They haven't even held Canspell since 2012. I don't know exactly how the two qualified. Maybe there are only two regional bees now.

    I remember when it was webcast and you didn't have to live in Canada to watch (I don't). I think the 2006 Canspell was the best spelling bee I've ever watched. Finola Hackett won it for the second time, and it went 40 rounds. There were still four spellers left after 22 rounds.

    They had Dr. Bailly there for the first time. They ran out of words and Dr. Bailly had to pick out words from the dictionary.

    Being an old hand, he had some in mind. His jaw dropped when FInola nailed "dghaisa" for the winning word. It's from Maltese and is a type of gondola. The "gh" is silent. Completely obscure and impossible to guess, but Finola knew it.

    Bailly just sat there stunned. Finola almost apologetically said "that's right" and Bailly just nodded and finally said "correct".

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  92. BeeFan2:37 PM

    Ah, so it isn't just us ThingThrowers who are out of step ...

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  93. BeeFan2:39 PM

    You'd probably want some sort of seeding so you don't put all the best spellers in one group.

    Maybe start with the order of finish from the previous year. You finished 2nd, you're a Group A; you were 5th, you're in Group B, and so on with all the returnees. The newbies can be random, I'd think.

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  94. victoria2:40 PM

    You could also use the written test for seeding. Quick and easy.

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  95. It's an interesting idea. I can say that at ESPN we'd be readily equipped to handle multiple feeds. Groups could be alphabetical the way they were years ago, just with more than two. I don't think you'd need seeding or anything, it's not like you need to end up with the same number of spellers in each group.

    I don't really have a problem with a slew of kids being eliminated after Round 3. It just feels like some of these kids are more than capable of showing their spelling prowess (and some of that is because they nailed words with roots in Round 6), so it sucks that we don't get to see more of them. Really, we saw only two words where they showed their prowess because they had the Rounds 2/3 words to study.

    That said, given the variance in the test scores (http://cdn.spellingbee.com/bee/semi-summary.pdf), I feel a little better about this than I did an hour ago.

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  96. Ugh, URLing picked up my ). Here: http://cdn.spellingbee.com/bee/semi-summary.pdf

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  97. Marsha2:53 PM

    Some fun facts here, though lots that most of us already knew. http://mentalfloss.com/article/56964/26-facts-about-scripps-national-spelling-bee But again with the fainting. Sigh.

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  98. BeeFan2:59 PM

    If you really want some trivia about the fainting incident ...

    Remember the original timing rules? You could ask for "bonus time" of an extra minute, once per speller per bee?

    That was the first word ever spelled correctly in bonus time. There were very few, as I recall. Nick Truelson got "concitato" in bonus time from the Championship Word List that year, I think.

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  99. This makes me wonder if it had any bearing on how when Paige Kimble announced the existence of vocab in the bee, she said something to the effect of she wanted spellers to know that dghaisa is a type of boat.

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  100. Marsha3:07 PM

    BeeFan, you are awesome. Thank you for being here and sharing these stories!

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  101. Uncle Spike3:10 PM

    You could even say the Baillys. Jacques had an older brother, Philip, who may have competed (I believe) at the national level too. And for the record, Jacques' mom, Florence, was a very influential bee organizer in Colorado for years, and coached many NSB competitors from Colorado afterwards, including Molly Dieveney and yours truly (but only for a few months...by the time I came around, she was ready to throw in the towel).

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  102. BeeFan3:12 PM

    Wow! That brought back even more memories. I remember "sacaton" now. I think Jennifer misspelled it by adding an "e" at the end.

    And, yes, six hours. Hog heaven for spelling fans. Spell until there's a winner. I forgot to eat dinner.

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  103. Uncle Spike3:16 PM

    Hey Cat...Jeff says hi! I met him for the first time yesterday, and also got to meet Sam and his family. They are OVERJOYED with Sam's placement. Jeff's definitely a great coach!

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  104. Did you guys have a bloodbath round that year? I can't remember.

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  105. julen4:18 PM

    See, I thought she wasn't connecting with the kids at all, and her talking head stuff was posey and bland and out-of-touch.

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  106. Sara Miller5:02 PM

    I could see it working (the multiple simultaneous bees in the early rounds). The World Series of Poker does that, basically.

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  107. Catherine Cojocaru6:07 PM

    Say hi to Jeff for me! We're so excited for Sam too! And he's an amazing coach - he's gotten so many spellers to the championship rounds.

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  108. Catherine Cojocaru6:08 PM

    Yep, that was the ol' Canadian bloodbath of round 5.

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  109. Sara Miller7:27 PM

    2006 was also the year we went the farthest into the Championship Words list (18 out of 25 words) with Finola and Kerry Close. Closest we've come to having co-champs.

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