As a newspaper reporter — that is, someone who writes for a living — I like to pride myself on my command of the English language. Spelling, grammar, syntax; you name it, I love it.
I had the opportunity to put my spelling knowledge to the test last Thursday at the first-ever “Spell Yeah!” adult spelling bee at Robert’s Westside in Forest Park. As part of the team representing Growing Community Media, NFP, the nonprofit parent of the Forest Park Review, I was joined by two members of our board of directors, Charlie Meyerson and Deb Abrahamson, as well as Oak Parker Ginger Yarrow.
Proceeds from the event benefitted the Imagine Foundation, a nonprofit working to fundraise for capital projects at Oak Park and River Forest High School.
The event operated like a mix between your middle school spelling bee and a night of bar trivia. As the rounds progressed, each team of four was given a word to spell, with 20 seconds to discuss among themselves and come to a consensus. In a philanthropic twist, teams that got their word wrong were given one chance to donate $100 and buy their way back into the competition.
We started with so-called intermediate words — those used every day, but with spellings that could trip up an unobservant speaker or a speller who relies on phonetics. Our team was asked to spell words like “leopard,” “stethoscope,” “debauchery,” “plaintiff” and “mnemonic.”
As the rounds went on, the words became longer, more obscure and much trickier. Our team was asked to spell words I had never encountered before, like “xerophyte,” “ebullience,” “absquatulate” and “sesquipedalian.”
That last one means, “characterized by the use of long words,” according to Merriam-Webster: a fitting choice for the event.
Many of the words given had French origins, and having minored in French in college, I thought I would be la creme de la creme in spelling those words. I was sorely disappointed when I learned from another group that “connoisseur” is spelled differently in English than in French, and again when I realized I wasn’t sure how to spell “hors d’oeuvres.” A big “Merci” to my team for filling in the gaps!
As teams started to drop like flies, after a tense three-way standoff, we found ourselves as one of the top two teams and the only team that hadn’t bought back into the competition — we hadn’t made a single mistake on the way.
In the top two, the rules got more complicated. To win, one team would have to correctly spell a word the other team misspelled before spelling a new word. After three rounds, the rules called for a tie, but both teams asked for one more round to determine the victors.
We were first given the word “xanthosis” — an abnormal yellow discoloration of the skin, distinct from jaundice — which, while tricky, we managed to guess correctly. After a long streak of success, the other team was tripped up by the word “myrmecology,” meaning the study of ants.
After three hours, several drinks and a pizza delivered to the bar, we were declared the winners and given spelling bee medals to mark our victory.
It was a fun night of community benefitting an important local charity. I’ll never forget the rush of spelling a word from memory — fittingly, the one that sticks out to me is “mnemonic” — and hearing the judge declare we were correct and had thwarted elimination for another round.