Biz Bee article
Feb. 23rd, 2013 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glacier_kittyYaay here's the article written about the bee:
FAIRBANKS — Four hours into judging the spelling bee, the judicial temperament had worn down to the thickness of flavedo, the outer colored layer of the mesocarp on citrus fruit.
The three-judge spelling panel, consisting of Betsy Robertson, Nicole Stewart and the author of this column, had long since discarded their white English courtroom-style wigs, wondering if the proceedings would drag on longer than the NFL draft.
Judge Stewart nearly jumped off the bench and cried oyez when one of the final two spelling teams missed a word at 11 p.m., which prevented everyone from going home.
The scribe kept looking at his watch. He had a newspaper column to write the next morning and wondered whether he could sprinkle it with spelling bee words that have never appeared in this section of the newspaper.
He figured it was not the worst idea he’s had. Or the most temerarious.
When he asked his wife later for advice, she said, “Make sure you spell them correctly.”
I’ll try.
The spellers in the 21st Annual Biz Bee at the Westmark began the protracted word game at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Jim Matherly served as a placatory master of ceremonies, while Assistant Professor Michael Edson handled gnathonic, gopak, gynarchy, grobian and gymkhana with hardly a gulp.
Spelling without an electronic crutch may one day be a lost art, but there are those who value the mental discipline of memorizing or working out the spelling based on the language of origin and the definition. There is a connection between mastering words and learning to communicate.
With 20 teams and 60 spellers, this was a big year for the Biz Bee, which raised $21,121 for the Literacy Council of Alaska at the event.
What helped inflate the fundraising total and extend the evening was the frequency with which teams paid hundreds of extra dollars to toss out words or send them to other teams as punishment.
So if a team balked at einkorn, it could take a crack at Weissnichtwo, a German word for an imaginary place.
No one in the room could have imagined this, but with so many good spellers on hand, we almost ran out of words.
I know. That sounds like running out of notes in music, but there were only 500 words on our list at the start and we always skip a few hundred because they are easy.
No one rises to this level of Fairbanks spelling supremacy without knowing parka, easel, holster or baleen. Come on.
Worried that we might have nothing to offer after No. 500, which was oolemma, the membrane surrounding an egg, I began paging through Merriam-Webster’s for emergency supplies — my bonus list included spodumene, mecamylamine and pheochromocytoma.
Luckily, we didn’t need those extras.
After 18 teams had been disqualified, the Alyeska Oil Spell Response Team and the Denali Didactisaurs of Denali Elementary School simply refused to go home.
With two teams left, it’s not a matter of getting one word right.
One team has to miss a word, which the other team has to spell correctly. Then that team has to spell a second word correctly to end it all.
This gets hard when you have to deal with tubulifloral, champignon, ferrotype and dysbarism in rapid succession.
It is true that both teams had hinted, during the fifth hour, that the first-ever tie in Biz Bee history wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were no judicial activists on the spelling bench.
At long last, the Oil Spell Responders outlasted the Didactisaurs for the win. No one seemed more surprised at this than the hardhat-wearing Alyeska spellers.
Kim Kortenhof, who works in emergency preparedness for Alyeska, was prepared to spell almost everything correctly, assisted by Wes Wilson and Alan Braley.
For the Didactisuars, Kate Ortega, Marian Lundquist and Clare Hill kept up the tradition of strong Denali spellers.
I think we're feeding all the redpolls in Alaska haha..they're going crazy out there!
Too bad I'm not in Hawaii :P
1. Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation
101. Life
101. Youth
103. Content
104. Change
105. Dreams
106. Pessimistic
107. Pirate
108. Novel
109. Doom
110. Garden
111. Sadness
112. Confusion
113. Freedom
114. Inevitable
115. Idle
116. Vampires
117. Convention
118. Roleplaying
119. Skull
120. Pain
121. Joy
122. Time
123. Warmth
124. Voodoo
125. Insomnia
126. Solitude
127. Zombies
128. Heaven
129. Evil
130. Weary
131. Candyland
132. Robot
133. Old-school
134. Patriotism
135. Flight
136. Movie
137. What if...
138. Batman
139. Dance
140. Oh, REALLY???
141. Play
142. Uh-oh...
143. Duel
144. Coldness
145. Caption
146. Photo
147. Pants
148. Red
149. Fiesta
150. Percent
151. Cute
152. Playfulness
153. Stress
154. Froof
155. Mutation
156. Skeleton
157. Rock
158. Lies
159. Ninja
160. Message
161. Bugs
162. Effort
163. Band-aid
164. Weird
165. Imaginary
166. Fly Me to the Moon...
167. Discovery
168. What?
169. Adhesive
170. Underworld
171. Tropical
172. magic
173. Random
174. Video Game
175. Crisis
176. Insanity
177. Ice
178. Working Hard
179. Hardly Working
180. Sandwich
181. Clone
182. Clumsy
183. Keyboard
184. Hope
185. Song
186. Surprise
187. Cursed
188. Awesomeness
189. hate
190. Fire
191. Orange
192. Love
193. Annoyance
194. Misunderstanding
195. Fantasy
196. Puppy
197. Lost
198. Pie
199. Fate
200. Death
FAIRBANKS — Four hours into judging the spelling bee, the judicial temperament had worn down to the thickness of flavedo, the outer colored layer of the mesocarp on citrus fruit.
The three-judge spelling panel, consisting of Betsy Robertson, Nicole Stewart and the author of this column, had long since discarded their white English courtroom-style wigs, wondering if the proceedings would drag on longer than the NFL draft.
Judge Stewart nearly jumped off the bench and cried oyez when one of the final two spelling teams missed a word at 11 p.m., which prevented everyone from going home.
The scribe kept looking at his watch. He had a newspaper column to write the next morning and wondered whether he could sprinkle it with spelling bee words that have never appeared in this section of the newspaper.
He figured it was not the worst idea he’s had. Or the most temerarious.
When he asked his wife later for advice, she said, “Make sure you spell them correctly.”
I’ll try.
The spellers in the 21st Annual Biz Bee at the Westmark began the protracted word game at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Jim Matherly served as a placatory master of ceremonies, while Assistant Professor Michael Edson handled gnathonic, gopak, gynarchy, grobian and gymkhana with hardly a gulp.
Spelling without an electronic crutch may one day be a lost art, but there are those who value the mental discipline of memorizing or working out the spelling based on the language of origin and the definition. There is a connection between mastering words and learning to communicate.
With 20 teams and 60 spellers, this was a big year for the Biz Bee, which raised $21,121 for the Literacy Council of Alaska at the event.
What helped inflate the fundraising total and extend the evening was the frequency with which teams paid hundreds of extra dollars to toss out words or send them to other teams as punishment.
So if a team balked at einkorn, it could take a crack at Weissnichtwo, a German word for an imaginary place.
No one in the room could have imagined this, but with so many good spellers on hand, we almost ran out of words.
I know. That sounds like running out of notes in music, but there were only 500 words on our list at the start and we always skip a few hundred because they are easy.
No one rises to this level of Fairbanks spelling supremacy without knowing parka, easel, holster or baleen. Come on.
Worried that we might have nothing to offer after No. 500, which was oolemma, the membrane surrounding an egg, I began paging through Merriam-Webster’s for emergency supplies — my bonus list included spodumene, mecamylamine and pheochromocytoma.
Luckily, we didn’t need those extras.
After 18 teams had been disqualified, the Alyeska Oil Spell Response Team and the Denali Didactisaurs of Denali Elementary School simply refused to go home.
With two teams left, it’s not a matter of getting one word right.
One team has to miss a word, which the other team has to spell correctly. Then that team has to spell a second word correctly to end it all.
This gets hard when you have to deal with tubulifloral, champignon, ferrotype and dysbarism in rapid succession.
It is true that both teams had hinted, during the fifth hour, that the first-ever tie in Biz Bee history wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were no judicial activists on the spelling bench.
At long last, the Oil Spell Responders outlasted the Didactisaurs for the win. No one seemed more surprised at this than the hardhat-wearing Alyeska spellers.
Kim Kortenhof, who works in emergency preparedness for Alyeska, was prepared to spell almost everything correctly, assisted by Wes Wilson and Alan Braley.
For the Didactisuars, Kate Ortega, Marian Lundquist and Clare Hill kept up the tradition of strong Denali spellers.
I think we're feeding all the redpolls in Alaska haha..they're going crazy out there!
Too bad I'm not in Hawaii :P
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation
101. Life
101. Youth
103. Content
104. Change
105. Dreams
106. Pessimistic
107. Pirate
108. Novel
109. Doom
110. Garden
111. Sadness
112. Confusion
113. Freedom
114. Inevitable
115. Idle
116. Vampires
117. Convention
118. Roleplaying
119. Skull
120. Pain
121. Joy
122. Time
123. Warmth
124. Voodoo
125. Insomnia
126. Solitude
127. Zombies
128. Heaven
129. Evil
130. Weary
131. Candyland
132. Robot
133. Old-school
134. Patriotism
135. Flight
136. Movie
137. What if...
138. Batman
139. Dance
140. Oh, REALLY???
141. Play
142. Uh-oh...
143. Duel
144. Coldness
145. Caption
146. Photo
147. Pants
148. Red
149. Fiesta
150. Percent
151. Cute
152. Playfulness
153. Stress
154. Froof
155. Mutation
156. Skeleton
157. Rock
158. Lies
159. Ninja
160. Message
161. Bugs
162. Effort
163. Band-aid
164. Weird
165. Imaginary
166. Fly Me to the Moon...
167. Discovery
168. What?
169. Adhesive
170. Underworld
171. Tropical
172. magic
173. Random
174. Video Game
175. Crisis
176. Insanity
177. Ice
178. Working Hard
179. Hardly Working
180. Sandwich
181. Clone
182. Clumsy
183. Keyboard
184. Hope
185. Song
186. Surprise
187. Cursed
188. Awesomeness
189. hate
190. Fire
191. Orange
192. Love
193. Annoyance
194. Misunderstanding
195. Fantasy
196. Puppy
197. Lost
198. Pie
199. Fate
200. Death
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no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 12:05 am (UTC)I can't believe over $20,000 was raised! That's SO awesome.