THE WRITTEN ROUND:  Because it was done live before all competitors simultaneously this year, as opposed to rotating them through a computer-administered test, it's already over. Only the last ten words might have proven difficult:

• JIH guh dee: unsteady or jerky; a suboptimal way of getting with it.
• IHN fo bahn: a series of tubes.
• KAL uhn chuhr, KAL uhn cher:  "a fever formerly supposed to affect sailors in the tropics causing them to imagine the sea a green field and to leap into it."
• buh NO bo, BAH nuh bo:  an ape.
• pih nee uhl EK tuh mee:  when you get your pih NEE uhl gland out.
• KOFF kuh ehsk:  I actually used this word in a brief two weeks ago. "Nightmarishly complex and illogical," like that dude KOFF kuh's stories.
• muh NAH duh mus:  inhabiting a single dwelling while singing this catchy song.
• vih teh LEN, vih teh LEEN, vih teh LIHN:  yolky.
• ass uh TAIR ee uhs:  used in salads
• HOO KEE LAU: Of or pertaining to a restaurant-slash-dinner theater in Chicopee, Mass.; a rambunctious Hawaiian fishing party.

Answers on the big board, so the spellers already know heading into tomorrow's two oral rounds just what shape they're in, and whether it's time to start scanning Thursday's IMAX schedules ...

169 SONG TITLES WITH PARENTHETICALS (IN ORDER OF PARENTHETICAL CHARM):  I like #72.

I SUDDENLY FELT VERY OLD, RESPONSIBLE, EMBARRASSED, AND UNABLE TO SEEK REVENGE:  Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt pens something of an open letter to Jorge Posada, explaining his own decision to retire mid-season.

IT BEE-GINS:  At this moment, two-hundred seventy five of the world's best English language spellers have gathered in a hotel conference room in National Harbor, Maryland, for the written component of the 84th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.  Unlike previous such tests administered via computer, this year all the kids will be in the room together as Dr. Jacque Bailly reads the word live, along with alternate pronunciations, the part of speech, origin, definition and using each in a sentence. Repeat info, pause for thirty seconds, move to the next word.  (Our takes on previous written rounds: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.)

Their totals on this twenty-five word test, combined with tomorrow's two guaranteed trips before the microphone, will determine who are the up-to-fifty kids who'll make it to Thursday's competition. Tomorrow's rounds will be streamed online on ESPN3 in two feeds - the traditional info-packed feed and, for the first time, "a second 'play along' version, featuring the option to view its coverage without graphics for fans at home to test their knowledge against the champion spellers."

The competitors are evenly divided by gender, and range in age from eight-year-old Ethan Ruggeri of Virginia to a pair of fifteen-year-olds.  Twenty-four have relatives who have done this before, though for the first time since 2005 there won't be a Shivashankar among them. We do have two returners from 2010's primetime finals: Canada's Greatest Speller, third-timer Laura Newcombe and Carlisle (PA)'s Joanna Ye, whose preparation looked like this:

Soon after the bee ended last year she embarked on her plan to try for the finals this year — to study the entire dictionary, word by word. “It took me about five months. I compiled a huge list of words to study — about 40,000 words — which took up over 800 pages of notebook paper,” Ye said.

“All the words are in the dictionary. I thought if I memorized it, I’d have the bee down,” she said. But she soon found out there are way too many words. Many, like a genus of bacteria, would be impossible to reasonably use in a sentence in the bee, so she didn’t worry about them, and instead focused on the ones that would be more likely to be in the bee.

Along with the six notebooks filled with words to study, her father, Yunshan, helped her make about 10,000 flashcards. “I was planning on making 40,000, but I stopped because it took too long to make them.”

“It was tedious. I spent several hours a day reading the dictionary,” she said, but listening to Bob Dylan while she did it helped make it bearable. “I love multitasking,” she said.

We, too, love multitasking, love these kids and love the Bee. That's why we're back for a ninth straight year to live-blog it all, joined by a number of former national finalists, Bee SuperFan Shonda Rhimes, and anyone else who feels like dropping by to celebrate and enjoy this competition. Do enjoy.

LANGUAGE OF ORIGIN, PLEASE?  Tomorrow morning, the written competition begins. Wednesday, they step before the microphone and anything can happen ...

THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY VODKA. IT GETS YOU DRUNK. I didn't bother seeing the Morgan Spurlock movie about product placement, but this article about how Cupcake Winery is having a moment makes me think that their product placement department needs some help. It notes that the winery apparently paid for it to be placed on an episode of Glee, in which the bottle was carried around (and I believe drunk from) by Kristin Chenoweth's character. How on earth was that a good product placement? Not only does it introduce both "of age" issues (a large proportion of Glee's audience is below legal drinking age) and "responsible consumption" issues (Chenoweth's character is an alcoholic) but also taste issues--Chenoweth's character is a cheap floozy (with an admittedly spectacular voice). Why on earth would a wine company seek to promote itself in that way? "The wine for cheap floozies with a drinking problem!" isn't exactly a brand image I'd seek to cultivate.

THE WORLD DOESN'T MATTER HERE, IN THIS OUTDOOR THEATER WHERE THE SHOW ALWAYS GOES ON:  The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic, Sarah Kaufmann, visits with the guards at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns to understand their work:

It’s all in the cadence. The soldiers practice their steps with a metronome, set to 72 beats per minute, the tempo of a slow march. A regal adagio time signature. Being chosen as a tomb guard is a rare honor, and even after training for five to seven months, they practice daily. The soldiers assigned to the duty serve 18-24 months. (There have been three female guards in the past, though there are none now.) After the cemetery closes, groups of them will walk the steps over and over. With perfection as the standard — this is written into the “sentinel’s creed” they learn during training — if they stop a half-inch off their mark and their supervisor sees it, they’ll hear about it.

When the new guard is in place, he is still mindful of his cadence. It governs every step — 21 at a time, the number chosen to echo the honor of a 21-gun salute. Then he turns and faces the tomb for 21 seconds. He swivels to face back down the mat, shifts his weapon to the outside shoulder, waits another 21 seconds, takes another 21 steps. This clean geometry and steady rhythm are traced over and over until he is relieved by another guard change.

“People always ask what we’re thinking,” says [Benton Thames, 24, assistant sergeant of the guard]. “But we’re not really thinking about anything. We’re counting.”