Memories of a Spelling Bee - and the moment where one brilliant speller lost her nerve....

Next Tuesday it's the final of the Times Spelling Bee, the first national spelling championship for schools. Ten teams (out of the 784 who took part) are now competing for the title of The Times Spelling Bee Champions and it's sure to be a tense, nerve-wracking day. That's for teachers, parents and children alike!

Spelling Bees are something quite new to the UK, although they have been running for years in the US (the brilliant documentary Spellbound is well worth a look if you haven't seen it before). One major (and humane) difference between the Times Spelling Bee and most American ones is that the Times works via a team performance, rather than resting entirely on an individual. At least the participants get some moral support from their team members.

My friend and colleague Jennifer Howze, editor of Alphamummy, grew up in America, and has vivid memories of the Spelling Bees from her childhood. Here she explains how she put friendship over winning at one particular Spelling Bee: she's never forgotten it...

"Every year the thin, stapled Spelling Bee book was the same. Every year I vowed to memorise the entire thing, to claim the top Spelling Bee prize, to become a star of stage and screen on the basis of my early Bee success. This was somewhat compromised by the fact that every year I opened it to the first page (why not start in the middle? Because I was that kind of child). I would begin testing myself (abate, abut, abustle…) and be watching the The Brady Brunch by the time I got to "crevasse". 

Spelling was a big thing in my school in small-town West Texas. Not because my school was particularly academic or brainy (did I mention it was in West Texas?). Rather the Bee was a school-year ritual, like the annual sports "play day" and the visit to the hot-dog-bun factory. Studying the Bee conferred special privileges: teachers let you let you out of geography to study in a group in a separate classroom. You got special credit, special attention. And on the day of the big Spelling Bee final you were part of the school-wide bustle, gathering with the other contenders early and finally taking your turn at the microphone in the cafeteria in front of the whole school. It was rock stardom for the literally precise.

 I relished the glory, first in front of my class and then, as each room picked its best candidates, in the school cafeteria performing in front of the whole school. And the subject - questions with one right answer - suited my borderline OCD personality.

One year, age 10, I was determined to win. I was no longer years younger than the school's oldest class of 11-year-olds, and I had applied myself, resisting the siren call of afternoon television, to read to the end of the book.

That year my friend Alice and I were both selected to go to the school wide competition. As we sat in the contestant's chairs adjacent (ha!) to the temporary stage, I was nervous but confident. One by one, kids filed up, stood at the mic in front of a table of three teachers. 

Sometimes they aced it, sometimes they stalled by asking for a definition. This one missed out a double letter, that one fumbled as he spoke the letters, inadvertently repeating one. I knew every word.

Alice and I whispered "that's right!" or "that's wrong!" to each other, smiling and jiggling our legs with excitement. With every round, the number of empty seats around us grew, as they erred and went back to sit with their classes.

There were around 15 of us left, when the words suddenly started to get harder. Alice went up and got a word that I didn't even recognise much less know how to spell (it had "oe" in the middle, I think). She missed it, walked off the stage and sat back down with the class without even looking at me. I was alone.

I don't remember getting to the stage, but I vividly remember my word. My word - such an easy one! A baby could spell it! But that would mean continuing without Alice. Suddenly the competition seemed lonely rather than fun. I didn't want her to feel bad that I was better speller than her. My word was patently easier than hers, and if I had been in front rather than her, I would have been knocked out.

I only had a few seconds to make my decision. My moment of glory had come - and I deliberately muffed it. After all the hours spent practicing the likes of "weird" and "accommodation", I conspired to misspell "example". It takes some doing, but I managed to shoehorn in an S.

Thinking about it now, I'm still ashamed and embarrassed. Why do such a pointless thing? When I raced back to the class and sat beside Alice, I was quick to tell her that I did know the word but has misspelled it deliberately. "Why did you do that?" she asked, looking genuinely confused. That's when I realised my real mistake.

What a moment before had seemed like solidarity was revealing itself to be something else entirely.

Do spelling bees prepare you for life? If by "life" you mean understanding your need to sabotage your own success, prioritise the feelings of others, and meekly decline to take bold chances, then I'd say yes. In that respect, it was perfect.

These days, when I run across words from alacrity to zenith, I automatically think "spelling bee word" and remember the stupid answer I gave. If I could go back, I would do it differently.

For the most part, I still think fondly about the Spelling Bee. I wish I could say it the last time my courage failed me and I didn't believe in myself. Unfortunately some things take a little longer to get composed correctly."

The Times has its own Spelling Bee website. Test yourself with online spelling games and puzzles, for all ages....Over a million games have been played since the site was launched.

Read School Gate:

The ups and downs, joy and tears of the Spelling Bee final

Why some people need to use a spell-checker

Test your spelling: are you too clever to spell?

Comments

[Brendan]

"Not because my school was particularly academic or brainy (did I mention it was in West Texas?)."

Can you imagine a similar, condescending slam about Harlem or Watts? Neither can I. Cultural slights like this, meant to ingratiate the writer with her casually anti-American readership, are why The Times will soon be deleted from my bookmarks. For the record, I know plenty of "bright, brainy" individuals from West Texas. Pity you're not among them.

[Charlotte]

I wish the BBC would use a spell checker and grammar checker. I've lost count of the number of instances of mixed tenses, such as "So-and-so is stood at far right" and "Will we be stood here next year." However, it has to be said that poor spelling and grammar is increasingly a British disease.

[Arthur Norton]

It is amazing that we seem to need Yanks to tell us what is new in our country. For the record, we had spelling bees in my school - and that is more than 50 years ago!

[Mikey]

"After all the hours spent 'practicing'"...oh come on!

[Milla]

Sorry, Mikey, "practicing" is fine in America, c'mon, like color, favor and so on, they've don't bother with the verb-version of practise but stick to practice for all. Easy, huh? Sheesh, those Americans.

[Y.M.Zadeh]

omigod! i was in it and i spelt clarical wrong coz i 4got the i! i was sooooooooooo angry at my self and when my bff won the spelling playoff (1st rnd) i cried. i know that sounds bad but i did. after that my english went down hill from a L6a to a L6c which is crap in my book. i am in yr 7 as well so think how hard it must be 4 me. =¬(