And then bee officials announced it was time for the tiebreaker, known as a “spell-off”, before Bruhat and Faizan were even given a chance to spell against each other in a conventional round.Bruhat’s 30 words were: brouette, adelantado, hyporcheme, bisellium, mycteric, endecha, sericin, nyctalopia, ascham, wenzel, cebell, heautophany, kwazoku, panetiere, sagaie, nachschlage, exorhason, porphyrio, giclee, ashwagandha, puszta, asarotum, scintillante, myrabalanus, sciniph, voussoir, caizinha, ramoneur, aposiopesis and abseil.
More information at The Guardian. I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of this competion, but will defer any commentary to hear what others think.
I thought giclee needed an accent. It and abseil are the two words I recognise, and for about three others, I recognise the root, but would not have thought the forms used actually existed as words. And I thought giclee was French anyway, and nachschlage's German! Are these hapless spellers expected to have French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin and Greek vocabularies that match their English??
ReplyDeleteUsefulness? Eh, taken to this extreme I'd say it's about as useful as being a chess grandmaster, although the prize money's less. The people at the apex of the competition are not particularly well-served by it, I don't think. But the global improvement of spelling at lower levels is beneficial, in my view, (just as lower levels of skill in chess are probably beneficial even if you never get to win a tournament.) But then I'm biased - I'm a professional writer.
What's the usefulness of the kids' soccer matches?
ReplyDeleteSpelling Bee is sport.
I have the same question about soccer and sports in general. It's taken for granted that competition, perhaps especially at the most extreme levels, is useful, wonderful, good. I'm inclined to think otherwise. What if we put all this energy into children's gardening, yoga, housekeeping, useful skills? I'm not at all convinced that competition brings out the best in us, though this is the prevailing and unexamined faith in the land.
DeletePrevailing and unexamined faith? Or lived experience across millennia and every culture known to anthropology? Ya know, either or.
DeleteAcross millennia? That's a lot of ground. Are we talking the Colosseum or the ball courts at El Tajin? Ya know, either or?
DeleteMaybe we can narrow this a bit, to 2024. Worldwide, sports market revenue is about twice what it would take to end extreme poverty for the billion poorest people. Of course we can think of hundreds of equally unnecessary activities under this same shadow. But, we're talking about "sport."
If we think about the carbon footprint of sport, to include everything from soccer mom hours-on-the-road, to air travel to games (like the Olympics, Super Bowl, NASCAR races, horse races, etc.), to the carbon footprint of facilities creation and maintenance, to the carbon footprint on sports related media, to the carbon footprint of the zillions of products promoted within the sports industry; that's, well, a very big number. A big number considering that sport, unlike, say, food, is not the least bit necessary. Sport, as spectacle, falls in the entertainment category.
Beyond all this we have to ask questions about CTE, the elephant in the corner of the football stadium. We have to ask why, if sport "builds character," some of the worst people are elite athletes (I won't list them). We have to ask why the sport of car racing exists, at all, in a moment of environmental crisis--symbolic as its elimination would be. Horse racing and animal abuse? Gymnasts breaking down under extreme pressure? Scandal after doping scandal?
In one of its few redeeming acts my local state university eliminated its football program about 30 years ago. It was a big deal...until it wasn't.
Your sentence could be the opening line to a book / novel /story of some kind, a la "it was a stark and normy bight...".
ReplyDelete?? which sentence
DeleteThe one that starts with "Bruhat’s 30 words were...".
DeleteYou have to consider it a memory competition, to memorize the most words you'll never use in a conversation or correspondence.
ReplyDeletexxoxoBruce
Most of these words are not English and not even plausibly loanwords.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to see a benefit to young brains. I don't see how to protect them from undue pressure.
ReplyDeleteIf I can figure out what this means, I'm going to start using it in every day conversation: heautophany
ReplyDelete[hēˈôtəfənē]
heautophany Definition
a vision or manifestation of a deity to oneself.