As reported in a live blog in the Washington Post, these were some of the words:
ajimezOut of curiosity, I looked up the winning words from previous competitions. From the 1980s and 90s:
luteovirescent
admittatur
guetapens
ericeticolous
porwigle
sylloge
tendenz
podilegous
antipyreticFrom the 1960s and 70s
xanthosis
sarcophagus
psoriasis
Purim
luge
milieu
staphylococci
sycophantAnd finally, from the 1920s and 1930s:
eczema
Chihuahua
abalone
croissant
vouchsafe
narcolepsy
gladiolusIt's apparent that ever-more obscure and difficult words are becoming necessary to determine the champion.
cerise
albumen
fracas
knack
torsion
intelligible
sanitarium
One of my acquaintances competed in this year's spelling bee. She got out in the third round.
ReplyDeleteYup - I knew all the words from the earlier examples and only podilegous from the recent set.
ReplyDeleteIts not so much a spelling bee as aan obscure words bee. I wonder if the finalists could define the words as well?
ReplyDeleteYou have to laugh, don't you? With modern standards of spelling so low due to our education system that no longer emphasises the three R's, preferring the "fun" classroom - take a look at the average spelling in comments on youtube and so many other blogs - then clearly such tests ought to be downgraded to exclude such obscurities and to only include words like those in the 20's and 30's tests. This would give the average genius - who is at the level of those earlier decades - a chance to win.
ReplyDeleteI didn't recognize any of this year's words, and I'll bet they aren't in my dictionary either. What is the point of such a contest?
ReplyDeleteIt's because the only way to be eliminated from a "bee" is to misspell a word, and these kids know all the simpler words, so if the contest were confined to those, it would go on indefinitely.
DeleteI'm sure the local rounds (the earlier rounds), include more familiar words.