Corporate spelling bee a humbling experience - Root Learning pair sting 21 other teams
For those like me who take pride in their spelling abilities, The Blade's annual Corporate Spelling Bee can be a humbling experience.
Unless your team wins the event, as two proofreaders from Root Learning Inc. did yesterday in a ballroom at the Radisson Hotel, you're going to have some explaining to do to co-workers who sent you into the competition carrying the company flag.
While you can ask the moderator for a definition, usage, or origin, and consult with your teammate -- in my case, Lisa Lawrence, a sales assistant in The Blade's digital media department -- you can't write anything down to see how it looks, and you can't correct yourself once you've started.
Not that the inability to use scratch paper or correct myself made any difference when I misspelled "calefactory," putting an i where the e goes. I simply didn't know the word means a monastery room warmed and used as a sitting room, and neither did Lisa, so I just plowed right through.
See ya!
To make matters worse, the team from WTVG-TV Channel 13, made it to the sixth round. As media competitors, we engaged in a cheerful rivalry at the bee, and before the competition, I was sure to remind WTVG's Diane Larson how she tripped over a letter in "celebrate" last year and ignominiously exited in the first round.
Winners Alma Reising and Veronica Hughes offered a little consolation afterward: They weren't certain about "calefactory" either.
I also now note that the spell-checker in my computer recognizes neither "calefactory" nor "anamnesis," the synonym for reminiscence that Ms. Hughes nailed to win the bee.
"We studied a long time, and we studied hard," she said. "I don't think you can do well at this without studying -- there are so many hard words."
Not that their spellings were perfect, either. In the championship rounds, they missed "rhyolite" -- an acidic volcanic rock -- by substituting an i for the y. But the Root Learning pair got a reprieve when Jon Bell, representing Rudolph-Libbe/GEM Industrial, mistakenly spelled "ecclesiastic" with an a before the first s after getting "rhyolite" right.
"I'm busy kicking myself," Mr. Bell said afterward. "We had it spelled right; I just said it wrong."
The bee, now in its 19th year, raised $33,150 for Read for Literacy, which teaches adults who either can't read or read poorly.
The bee started with 22 two-person teams, including entries from several nonprofit organizations sponsored by local corporations.
All 22 survived the first round, and only two dropped out in the second round. I spelled "snooker" in the first round and Lisa spelled "destitute" to clear the second, but we were among seven teams to crash and burn in the third.
Besides the embarrassment of a wipeout, sticking around until the end of a spelling bee provides plenty of opportunity for frustration as remaining contestants spell correctly -- or misspell -- words I know.
Fortunately for my psyche, quite a few I didn't know, such as "subboreal," a word meaning very cold, almost frigid, which finally claimed the WTVG team.
"I can hold my head high," Ms. Larson said as she and Lee Conklin strode from the dais. Channel 13 has the unofficial media crown for the year, given that the other TV and radio stations in town didn't even compete.
The Root Learning and Rudolph-Libbe teams advanced to the championship round after the Toledo Symphony team, last year's defending champions, dropped out in the eighth round by misspelling "laburnum," a variety of poisonous shrubs and trees native to Europe and Asia.
Other veteran teams, including the perennial favorite from the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, fell by the wayside earlier. The Root Learning pair, by contrast, were in the competition for just the second year.
"We can go back to our company now without hanging our heads," said Ms. Reising, who with Ms. Hughes finished tied for fifth last year.
"We're proofreaders. If we don't get it right, our company might fire us," Ms. Hughes added.
