Our rules are similar to those in years past -- we have one remaining five-timer (Sriram Hathwar), and four spellers returning for their fourth year (Lucas Urbanski, Yasir Hasnain, Vanya Shivashankar, and Shayley Martin). The use of these veterans will be restricted.
So: pick two spellers, only one of whom can be one of the five spellers above. While individual spellers can be used more than once, you cannot repeat the same pairing that someone else has already submitted. First come, first served, and you cannot choose a speller once s/he spells tomorrow morning.
You will get one point for each word your spellers correctly spell during tomorrow's rounds of the Bee, which resumes at 10am eastern on ESPN2. In addition, each speller will receive an additional point for reaching primetime, to account for the computer-based cutoff after tomorrow's three live rounds. Most points wins; tiebreaker will be whoever has the individual speller going the furthest. Do not edit your entry after you've made it; if you need to make corrections, reply to your original comment.
Previous pool winners are Elicia Chamberlin in 2006 (Close/Hooks), Professor Jeff and Amy tied in 2007 (O'Dorney and Thomas/Horton), KJ in 2008 (Mishra/K Shivashankar), Cagey (K Shivashankar/Pastapur) in 2009, Bob Loblaw/Jenn tied in 2010 (Veeramani and Chemudupaty/Denniss); 2011's winner was Nupur Lala (the Roy/Ye Keystone combo); Bobby in 2012 (Nandipati/Mahankali); and Sara Miller picked the final two of 2013 (Mahankali/Sivakumar).
It's my blog, so I go first: Vanya Shivashankar and Mary Horton—the latter not because she had a perfect score in the computerized test (as did Syamantak Payra, a returning prime-timer), but because you may remember her older brother Jonathan, of whom we were big fans back in the day, and why the heck not go for a younger-sister duo?
