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I've always been a good speller, but I've had bad experiences with spelling bees. In 4th grade, I was tripped up by "tricot" (pronounced
So anyway, this morning I watched the two-hour final episode of "The Great American Celebrity Spelling Bee". It was on Fox on Friday, and had I not been lucky enough to not completely TiVo-skip a commercial for it earlier in the week I would have missed it completely, because I didn't hear about it anywhere else. It was pretty much what it sounds like: a collection of (B- and C-list) celebrities in a spelling competition, complete with "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"/"Weakest Link"-style overdramatic lighting and music, hosted by John O'Hurley (best known as J. Peterman from "Seinfeld"). I think it's a great idea to glamorize spelling instead of trivia for a change; I realize that spelling questions are more or less trivia questions anyway, in the sense that either you know the right answer or you don't, but I consider it to be a much more important (or at least useful) area of knowledge than knowing various obscure facts about, well, trivial subjects. (Actually, what I feel about both spelling and trivia is that it's more important to know when to look something up than it is to actually hold all the answers in your head, but that would make a much less exciting game show.)
The bonus of a celebrity version is that you get to laugh at how dumb some celebrities really are, but it's a little frustrating when the host is dumb too: many words were pronounced wrong (philatelist, fiefdom, surreptitious, zoological, avoirdupois, conquistador, machismo—although these last two have alternate pronunciations listed in Merriam-Webster) but the kicker was when Brett Butler (the eventual winner) was asked "Buttafuoco" (don't ask me why they even allowed proper nouns) and she spelled it "Buttafucco"... and it was called correct! Considering that there was real money at stake ($75,000 for her charities, $50,000 for herself), it seems rather scandalous, and I'm wondering if anyone told the runner-up, Carol Leifer. Leifer was knocked out at the end by "guernsey", while Butler only had to spell "cornucopia" to win, so it really came down to the luck of who got which words anyway. They both had gotten many words wrong, as did the other quarterfinalists George Wendt and Alan Thicke, but it seemed like Butler really butchered the ones she got wrong (like "sphelology" for "speleology") while the others made understandable mistakes. She was also one of several celebrities who needed to write in the air with a finger while spelling the word, which was amusing to watch.
The weirdest thing about the format was that at any time (except in the "speed spell" rounds, where they only had 10 seconds to spell a word) they could ask Samir Patel, the 10-year-old national spelling bee champion, to spell their word, and they only had to agree or disagree—and there was no penalty for asking him! I don't know why they didn't just ask him for every word, although shockingly he did get one word wrong: he spelled "bustier" as "boustier" (and Baywatch babe Gena Lee Nolin didn't know any better, ironically).
I don't know how I would have done under the pressure of being on camera and in front of a live audience, not to mention the 10-second speed rounds, but there were several words that I would definitely have misspelled: ecdysiast, vichyssoise, dishabille, desiccant, and avoirdupois. I'd never enountered "ecdysiast" before; I'd heard "vichyssoise" but never seen it written, and I'd seen "dishabille" but never heard it pronounced. I have no excuse for "desiccant"—my impulse was to use two s's and one c, but at least I've learned how to spell "satellite" and "dilettante", both of which also showed up. I'd seen "avoirdupois", but I'd never heard it pronounced correctly: Merriam-Webster says
Next Friday on Fox is Test the Nation; I've always been skeptical about IQ tests, but it will still be interesting to watch.
/'trE-(")kO/), which I had never seen nor heard, and I don't believe I've seen or heard it since. Now that I think back on it, I'm realizing that our teacher totally mishandled the game: she asked several players in a row to spell "tricot" (none of us got it right), then (after eliminating us) went on to another word ("scary") for the next player. Clearly, if no one got it right, then no one should have been eliminated for it—but also, she shouldn't have given the same word to multiple players. Anyway, in 5th grade, I won the classroom competition and made it to the all-grade contest, where I lost because of "kaleidoscope"; I hadn't yet learned that the "i before e except after c" rule was utterly useless.So anyway, this morning I watched the two-hour final episode of "The Great American Celebrity Spelling Bee". It was on Fox on Friday, and had I not been lucky enough to not completely TiVo-skip a commercial for it earlier in the week I would have missed it completely, because I didn't hear about it anywhere else. It was pretty much what it sounds like: a collection of (B- and C-list) celebrities in a spelling competition, complete with "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"/"Weakest Link"-style overdramatic lighting and music, hosted by John O'Hurley (best known as J. Peterman from "Seinfeld"). I think it's a great idea to glamorize spelling instead of trivia for a change; I realize that spelling questions are more or less trivia questions anyway, in the sense that either you know the right answer or you don't, but I consider it to be a much more important (or at least useful) area of knowledge than knowing various obscure facts about, well, trivial subjects. (Actually, what I feel about both spelling and trivia is that it's more important to know when to look something up than it is to actually hold all the answers in your head, but that would make a much less exciting game show.)
The bonus of a celebrity version is that you get to laugh at how dumb some celebrities really are, but it's a little frustrating when the host is dumb too: many words were pronounced wrong (philatelist, fiefdom, surreptitious, zoological, avoirdupois, conquistador, machismo—although these last two have alternate pronunciations listed in Merriam-Webster) but the kicker was when Brett Butler (the eventual winner) was asked "Buttafuoco" (don't ask me why they even allowed proper nouns) and she spelled it "Buttafucco"... and it was called correct! Considering that there was real money at stake ($75,000 for her charities, $50,000 for herself), it seems rather scandalous, and I'm wondering if anyone told the runner-up, Carol Leifer. Leifer was knocked out at the end by "guernsey", while Butler only had to spell "cornucopia" to win, so it really came down to the luck of who got which words anyway. They both had gotten many words wrong, as did the other quarterfinalists George Wendt and Alan Thicke, but it seemed like Butler really butchered the ones she got wrong (like "sphelology" for "speleology") while the others made understandable mistakes. She was also one of several celebrities who needed to write in the air with a finger while spelling the word, which was amusing to watch.
The weirdest thing about the format was that at any time (except in the "speed spell" rounds, where they only had 10 seconds to spell a word) they could ask Samir Patel, the 10-year-old national spelling bee champion, to spell their word, and they only had to agree or disagree—and there was no penalty for asking him! I don't know why they didn't just ask him for every word, although shockingly he did get one word wrong: he spelled "bustier" as "boustier" (and Baywatch babe Gena Lee Nolin didn't know any better, ironically).
I don't know how I would have done under the pressure of being on camera and in front of a live audience, not to mention the 10-second speed rounds, but there were several words that I would definitely have misspelled: ecdysiast, vichyssoise, dishabille, desiccant, and avoirdupois. I'd never enountered "ecdysiast" before; I'd heard "vichyssoise" but never seen it written, and I'd seen "dishabille" but never heard it pronounced. I have no excuse for "desiccant"—my impulse was to use two s's and one c, but at least I've learned how to spell "satellite" and "dilettante", both of which also showed up. I'd seen "avoirdupois", but I'd never heard it pronounced correctly: Merriam-Webster says
/"a-v&r-d&-'poiz/. O'Hurley pronounced it /"a-v&r-dü-'pwä/ which caused Thicke to spell it "averdupois", which is probably how I would have spelled it; I probably would have pronounced it /a-"vwär-dü-'pwä/, though, and if it had been pronounced that way I would have spelled it right. Englishified French words suck...Next Friday on Fox is Test the Nation; I've always been skeptical about IQ tests, but it will still be interesting to watch.
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At last! A chance for librarians to win lots of money! If library school were a quiz show, it would be way more entertaining...
(I'm currently sitting in class and shaking with frustration at how utterly pointless it is. Ignore me and my deep, deep bitterness.)