Spelling Bees Are Not Just for 6th Graders Anymore
By By Charlotte Maitre, Columbia News Service
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“Disembogue?”
“Smorgasbord?”
“Propaedeutic?”
On the fourth Wednesday of every month for the past six months, Dave Byron-Brown has been going to Freddy’s Bar & Backroom in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood to tackle words like these.
In that time he has never won the honor of being named the best speller in the room. But on a recent night, the English-born New Yorker was able to add c-h-a-m-p-i-o-n to his vocabulary, all at the tender age of 48.
After spelling “titian,” Byron-Brown shared a $10 prize in the first contest of the evening. He outlasted 11 30-something hipsters in the second contest, with the winning word “gigot,” for a total win of $16.
“We don’t have spelling bees in England," Byron-Brown said. “It’s a wonderful little game."
Adult spelling bees have become the new redemptive playground for grown-ups across the nation. Many of the contestants have memories of sweating over difficult words in elementary and middle school contests. Some were inspired by “Spellbound,” the 2002 Academy Award-nominated documentary that followed the journey of eight young Americans preparing for the 1999 National Spelling Bee in Washington.
Today, from New York to Oregon, nostalgic competitors are rediscovering the cerebral fun of spelling bees minus the painful sting of defeat. In Brooklyn, Pete’s Candy Store’s features the Williamsburg spelling bee every other Monday. Its hip hosts, Bobby Blue and Jen Dziura, give brainy Brooklynites a chance to show their skills in front of an audience.
At Freddy’s, when the winner takes it all, the loser stands tall with a Brooklyn Lager beer in hand.
“It’s not a real competition. It’s just a dollar,” said 31-year-old Abby Kelly. “It’s a way for people to drink and have fun.”
Freddy’s spelling bee host, Josh Reynolds, 31, believes the lack of pressure in adult spelling bees explains their growing popularity.
“It really is a redemption story,” he said. “Almost anyone who has been in a spelling bee remembers when they failed. There were so few winners.”
In 1786, Noah Webster’s spelling books known as “The Blue-backed Spellers” became a key impetus for the spelling contests in the United States. The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., started the National Spelling Bee in 1925, and in 1941, the Scripps Howard News Service began to sponsor the program. More recently, Myla Goldberg’s 2001 novel, “Bee Season,” generated a renewed interest in spelling bee contests.
Dr. Alex Cameron served as Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee pronouncer for 22 consecutive years until his death in 2003.
“In this country, spelling has always been a community process,” he said in “Spellbound.”
Indeed, contests for adults are now held across the nation as fundraising and social events. In 2002, the South Orange-Maplewood Education Foundation in New Jersey raised $17,000 in a spelling bee for a tutoring program.
Contestants over the age of 50 have also joined the fun. William R. Long, 53, has become the unofficial face for Oregon’s national senior spelling bees after competing in 2004 and 2005. Born in Stamford, Conn., Long is an adjunct professor at Willamette University College of Law. He believes that spelling bees appeal to old people because the baby-boom generation is highly competitive.
“We are a measurement-oriented and achievement-oriented generation,” Long said. “In addition, most of us are healthy after 50 and seek new and different challenges.”
And some are craving a little mischief to spice up spelling bee contests. Grown-ups spell e-r-o-t-i-c-a or naughtier words without having to worry about offending their parents. Similarly, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" musical comedy, which opened on Broadway in 2005, gives audiences a decidedly edgier version of the competition.
A year and a half ago, after watching “Spellbound,” Reynolds approached the owners of Freddy’s with the idea to hold an adult bee. It has since become a popular draw among the neighboring residents. An investor relations researcher by day, Reynolds morphs into a sympathetic host who offers participants two ways to win a chocolate cookie: by getting a word wrong or by noting when Reynolds mispronounces a word because of the Southern accent he acquired growing up in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Reynolds, a voluble talker, selects a word list online and ranks the words as easy, medium, hard and super hard. He assists with the etymology and definition of words, and will gladly use one in a sentence, sometimes to no avail.
“At the super-hard round, pretty much every one dies,” he said.
Competitors pay one dollar a hand and the winner takes all. On a good night, Reynolds estimates that a champion could win as much as $30 in each contest.
Zack Hagan, a 27-year-old contestant, on his second attempt at Freddy’s spelling bee, worked up the crowd of eager spellers with his caustic humor.
“I like being humiliated and beaten,” he said with a smirk. “I would recommend it to anyone who wants to lose because it is a losing place, mostly for losers.”
During the first set, Hagan agonized over “precocity.” He stared at the wall under the dim light, a confused look on his face.
When he spelled “precausity,” he was eliminated. Hagan was also tossed out in the second competition when he wrongly guessed that “tantivy” ended with “v-i-e."
For 31-year-old survey analyst Krista Overby, Freddy’s marked her first spelling bee competition since the third grade. Overby, a graduate of Rutgers University who once majored in English, said she was ready to lose.
“I can’t really spell anything,” she said. “I come to drink, maybe get drunk and maybe make a fool of myself.”
Overby failed in the first contest when she offered “disrhytmia” for “dysrhythmia.” During the second contest, she was out when she spelled “procity” in lieu of “prosody.”
Matthew Power, a 31-year-old freelance writer, decided to try a spelling bee on a whim. Soon after, he left the podium with a long face after missing the first ‘i’ in “Galbraithian.”
During a break before the second competition, Reynolds entertained the crowd with a rapid-fire speech about a date he had won through a newspaper contest. The moment illustrated the collection of kindred spirits, people for whom words are sacred.
Reynolds recounted his annoyance when his dinner companion slowly scanned the menu with her index finger. That gesture, he said, demonstrated a lack of familiarity with words.
“I never felt I could order for someone,” he said. “No. We didn’t find love.”
The laughter continued for a while.