WWTBAM Bored

It's been a while since my team won the Charity Spelling Bee in our little burg, but we managed it tonight.

In order to extract more money from the contestants and their supporters, the rules allow you to pass a word to another team and buy back in for $100 each. We would have missed our second round word if we couldn't have passed it -- seitan. Our subsequent words were skein, palette, convalesce, baccalaureate, and synecdoche. We had a little trouble with synecdoche and had to buy back in.

That got us to the penultimate round of three teams, in which all the teams spelled five words on paper -- bourgeoisie, terpsichorean, dudgeon, otiose, and sesquipedalian. The two teams spelling the most words correctly went into the final round of two teams, where the rules changed again. The judges drew for who went first, and each team spells a word until they spell it correctly. We got lucky, both in being drawn first and in getting a word we could spell: inconcinnity. We didn't play last year, but the judge said that it went three rounds before a word was finally spelled correctly.

We were also lucky with some words we didn't get: Faille, glossolalia, and panegyric.

All smiles.

WTG!

Congratulations, Sprots! We always knew your team was the best. You just needed that first-place trophy to prove it!

Thanks, BobJuch!

Awesome job!

Thanks, SC! It was way fun. We get to keep the traveling trophy for a whole year with our team name on one of the little metal plates, sorta like this:

My favorite sesquipedalian moment includes a great Panthers player and a little girl actor I know from Raleigh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OwntHMKmo4

Ritterskoop wrote:My favorite sesquipedalian moment includes a great Panthers player and a little girl actor I know from Raleigh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OwntHMKmo4

Way cool! Then, as Youtube often does, it promptly put up a new video. This one was about the Budweiser Clydesdales -- very enjoyable.

They didn't make you spell sciurine? What kind of a sixth rate spelling bee is this?

lb13

Thumbs up Sprots!

littlebeast13 wrote:They didn't make you spell sciurine? What kind of a sixth rate spelling bee is this?

lb13

Thanks, Mr. T!

I'm suuuuuuure that sciurine will come along one of these years. Right after scalare.

If you lived up here, restaurants would be trying to *feed* you seitan.

My opinion is, if Asian culinary trads have developed a dish with soy product in it, like ma po tofu, I'll eat it. Without the pork, thanks. It always cracks me up to see this on a menu in the veggie section, "with pork".

But if a lot of vegans, or vegetarians for that matter, want "soy that tastes like meat", they should question why they're vegans/vegetarians in the 1st place, not try to get me to eat that stuff.

Congratulations! I was in charge of our Spelling Bee teams at my school for almost 20 years. Soon after I retired, our district stopped participating in the county bee because Scripps Howard started charging $100 per school.

lilclyde54 wrote:Congratulations! I was in charge of our Spelling Bee teams at my school for almost 20 years. Soon after I retired, our district stopped participating in the county bee because Scripps Howard started charging $100 per school.

I would think that Scripps Howard gets enough TV money that they don't have to nickel and dime each school. I'd guess there are other schools that dropped out for the same reason. That's a shame.

Thanks, LilClyde!

Ghost, the team we passed "seitan" to had no trouble with it. I'm sure it will proliferate on menus here soon.

ghostjmf wrote:If you lived up here, restaurants would be trying to *feed* you seitan.

My opinion is, if Asian culinary trads have developed a dish with soy product in it, like ma po tofu, I'll eat it. Without the pork, thanks. It always cracks me up to see this on a menu in the veggie section, "with pork".

But if a lot of vegans, or vegetarians for that matter, want "soy that tastes like meat", they should question why they're vegans/vegetarians in the 1st place, not try to get me to eat that stuff.

Because maybe, just maybe, they like the taste but don't think that an animal should be slaughtered just to accommodate them? Especially when there are alternate means for doing so.

Just a thought....

I'm a judge in the regional bee sponsored by the paper where I work, and yes, the national folks do charge each school a fee to participate. It helps pay expenses for our person who spends months getting it all set up (which is to say mostly, renting the venue).

I wonder who will sponsor these things when print newspapers die?

Ritterskoop wrote:I'm a judge in the regional bee sponsored by the paper where I work, and yes, the national folks do charge each school a fee to participate. It helps pay expenses for our person who spends months getting it all set up (which is to say mostly, renting the venue).

I wonder who will sponsor these things when print newspapers die?

It's a big problem. The local paper chips in a lot -- a small hors d'oeuvres spread and printing of the program. I don't know how much the hotel charges for use of the room, if anything. Usually that venue charges $300 plus $75 for the bar. Ours is for charity, so I'm sure the hotel could write off most of the expenses, if not all. That's my only thought about how to manage the costs and stay in a nice venue. It would cost a lot less to have it at a City, County, or even State owned facility, so that may be what happens.