Wednesday, May 27, 2015

ROUND 3: We are back, and I expect things to get a little tougher now.

1:31pm: cryptoporticus, escritoire, rutabaga. They're not messing around.

5:05pm: And yet some kids get Pickwickian, haberdasher, (tales of ) ribaldry, and Pythagorean. It's execrable!

5:17pm: Fifth grade is too early to see The Godfather, so "kahn-sihl-YARE-ee," is a problem even when Dr. Bailly adds "kahn-SIG-lee-air-ee" as an alternate pronunciation.

5:41pm: CONTROVERSY!  We go to instant replay to see if JoJo Widi stopped himself short enough in trying to correct himself on 'gamboge'.  He didn't.  He went g-a-m-b then briefly said 'a' before going 'o' and asking to restart with g-a-m-b-o. It was a really close call.

214/283 remain for the cutdown.

53 comments:

  1. Barbara Williams1:33 PM

    Oof, going down on rutabaga has to suck. She's not going to forget that word anytime soon. :(

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  2. Adam B.1:38 PM

    Oh, Nicholas Lee, he's not "Mr. Bailly." The Spelling Gods will punish you -- not now, but soon.

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  3. victoria1:43 PM

    I'm guessing maybe a Carl Sandberg fan?

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  4. Genevieve1:50 PM

    I can't find anywhere on the Bee website that shows the words from the last round (or this round) and which spellers went out. Am I just looking in the wrong place?

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  5. Amber Born2:00 PM

    Click on "results" on the homepage, then the round you want. It has a column that indicates if an error was made.

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  6. Genevieve2:14 PM

    Thank you, Amber! The pages I looked at didn't have the "Results" link. Now that I'm back at the homepage, I see it.

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  7. victoria2:18 PM

    I missed myrmidon at the last adult spelling bee I did. *solidarity*

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  8. Genevieve2:19 PM

    I keep wanting to find an adult spelling bee! The only ones I've seen around here involving drinking after each round, which I can't do.

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  9. victoria2:21 PM

    There's a small, somewhat-organized group around here that does them a couple times a year as a fundraiser for various literacy nonprofits. It attracts possibly the nerdiest crowd I've ever been a part of (and I was both a mathlete and met my husband through quiz bowl). It is GLORIOUS.

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  10. Christy in Philly2:54 PM

    Fidelity seems like an unfairly simple word to be in the same round as Gesamtkunstwerk.

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  11. Christy in Philly3:20 PM

    On second thought, I have this streaming in the background at my desk and I just discovered that I'm streaming this morning's coverage, not the current coverage. Oh geez! Those two words were not in the same round.

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  12. Marsha3:24 PM

    and now another one down on avgolemono (one of my favorite soups!). Food words is hard, yo.

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  13. Marsha3:26 PM

    I had a problem with the stream for a while too - couldn't get it to show the current round and also thought these words sounded too easy. But now I have it working.

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  14. Marsha3:49 PM

    SO many foodie words! gastronome, zabaglione, nonpareil, mascarpone, and avgolemono all in the last 20 spellers.

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  15. Christy in Philly3:49 PM

    I've been chalking my issue up to user error. It's just funny to me that I've been streaming something for an hour that I streamed this morning. At least I know I'm focusing on my work!

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  16. Marsha3:57 PM

    Renvoi! Law word! (though I learned it in conflicts with a different meaning, and David Currie pronounced is as rahn-VWAH).

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  17. Christy in Philly4:12 PM

    Funny story about "courgette" which was also in this round: Last month, I was out to dinner at a restaurant in London and I asked the waitress what a courgette is as I had never heard that word. After thinking about it for awhile, she told me that it was "like a cucumber except you cook it."

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  18. Marsha4:21 PM

    Two thoughts:


    1. I like the "play-along" version on ESPN3 not because I'm trying to play along, but because they give you the definition, origin, and part of speech on the screen even if the speller doesn't ask for it. And you get to see the correct spelling written out. (The play-along aspect is sort of cheating - I can pick out the correct choice 90% of the time from the 3 they give, but I could never spell the darned thing if someone said it to me.)


    2. I wonder how many of these spellers have studied totally on their own such that they haven't heard these sorts of words pronounced out loud much. Some of them seem to have trouble with hearing and saying the words for a bit, then figuring the word out and spelling it with confidence. It seems that maybe they just haven't really heard them said out loud in their practice.

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  19. Adam B.4:35 PM

    Hate to see a kid go down on vexillology.

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  20. Barbara Williams5:04 PM

    It's heartbreaking to me when they pronounce incorrectly, Dr. Bailly tries his best to get them to say it right, and they give up and spell and their only error is whatever they were saying wrong. :(

    Also, Kasey Torres is just as cute as he can be. Here's hoping he makes the semis!

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  21. Barbara Williams5:09 PM

    Seems like a lot of kids going down on proper nouns. Reykjavik, Plantagenet, Torquemada...

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  22. Marsha5:11 PM

    The names, oy, the names! This round we've lost kids on Zamzummin, Plantagenet, Torquemada, and Reykjavik, and one of the four misspellings in round 2 was Panglossian. If you've never heard it, you really have no shot.

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  23. Genevieve5:13 PM

    Octonocular. That's a word I'd like to hear more often.

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  24. Adam B.5:23 PM

    Or etouffee.

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  25. Barbara Williams5:38 PM

    Microfiche seems absurdly easy for this round.

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  26. Marsha5:39 PM

    Wonder if a single one of these kids has ever seen a microfiche.

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  27. Barbara Williams5:41 PM

    That's what we were just saying here!

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  28. Marsha5:51 PM

    Time for my annual rant. FAINTING ISN'T FUNNY. Nice little top 5 montage going along.... q-r-s3-quattro, sardoodledom, numnah....and then they have to go with the fainting. Why do they have to keep showing that? Yes, I get it, it's impressive that he spelled the word. But a kid fainting is NOT funny, and it is NOT a "top 5 spelling bee moment." You wanna show me Rebecca Sealfon yelling euonym 17 times in packages, go ahead, please. But stop with the fainting.

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  29. BeeFan5:53 PM

    I suppose it's superfluous to scream again about the inclusion of "the faint" in that "Buzzworthy" montage. At least they showed something actually notable about it, that it was the first word ever spelled correctly under "bonus time" (for those who remember the original timing rules).

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  30. Jake D5:54 PM

    As a speller (in 2005), my parents were HOPELESS pronouncers, so I studied on my own. The main word list for the prelims didn't have pronunciations, so I just looked at the words and looked up pronunciations if they seems weird. When I got "aggiornamento," it was a bit weird since I had never said it out loud before, just memorized the spelling. "Oh, that's the agee-ornament-oh one."

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  31. Adam C.5:55 PM

    At least this time they put it into context and showed him spelling the word, which most of the clip packages don't do.

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  32. Adam C.5:55 PM

    Vocab results are posted for both rounds. http://spellingbee.com/public/results/2015/round_results

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  33. Adam B.5:57 PM

    29 points needed in prelims to advance. Names being read now.

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  34. Adam C.6:00 PM

    Vanya!

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  35. Marsha6:00 PM

    All three winner little siblings make it through.

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  36. Adam B.6:03 PM

    And Gokul, with a perfect score in the prelims.

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  37. Marsha6:05 PM

    Dev Jaiswal as well.

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  38. Adam B.6:06 PM

    And our Jamaican! And Dev With The Bowtie!

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  39. Adam B.6:07 PM

    The Pool will be posted no sooner than 8pm. Tentatively putting restrictions on 5-timer and 4-timers only?

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  40. Marsha6:08 PM

    I don't know if this guy is saying all these names correctly, but he's acting like he is, and it's impressing me.

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  41. Saray6:13 PM

    Argh! I'll be lecturing at that time. Damn Fashion Law.

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  42. Marsha6:14 PM

    That's what you've done in the past. Plus the uniqueness restriction.

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  43. Adam C.6:15 PM

    Meaning can only take one from among 5- and 4-timers?

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  44. Adam B.6:15 PM

    debating whether to also restrict the other two younger sibs, but they're first timers.

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  45. Marsha6:16 PM

    Oy with the product placement.

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  46. Hmm, does anyone remember (generally speaking) if perfect scores on the test are any kind of reliable predictor of success in the finals? Did Vanya get a perfect score year before last or am I misremembering? (I'm wondering how much I want to try to get Cole Shafer-Ray as one of my picks for the pool)

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  47. BeeFan7:44 PM

    The years that the tests have been difficult it's been a good predictor, as I recall.

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  48. Adam B.8:03 PM

    Syamantak Payra and Mary Horton had the highest scores in last year's test. Horton finished tied for 5th.

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  49. Thanks for the refreshers, guys. Still vacillating on my picks.

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  50. Adam B.8:37 PM

    The pool will open at 9pm.

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  51. Jacob Devine11:31 PM

    I'm pretty sure Vanya had a perfect score two years ago, when she got 5th.

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  52. Jacob Devine11:36 PM

    Wait nope! Just looked it up. Vanya had the only perfect score in 2012 (10th place). In 2013, it was Arvind (champ), Pranav (runner-up), and Grace Remmer (7th).

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  53. Jenn.8:26 AM

    Ahh, David P. Currie.

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