The Cape Fear Literacy Council holds a spelling bee for adults every year as a fundraiser. The 28th Annual Spelling Bee for Literacy was held last night, and the Friends of the New Hanover County Public Library made it to the fifth round of six. Congratulations to the Wilmington Cape Fear Rotary Club for winning and to the Rotary Club of Wilmington for placing second!
I've been competing on the Friends of the Library team (Fiends of the Library) for several years; I've been a member of the board for several years and a volunteer before that. Sadly, while the FOL team has won the bee nine times in the past, none of those victories has come in this decade, although we've been in the finals once or twice. But I feel no shame.
The word that beat us was kwashiorkor, a form of protein-deficit malnutrition. The other fifth-round words were hydroxyapatit, gymkhana, ephippium, and caitiff. Since the format for this round (and the first four) had two teams spelling at once (each team reached a consensus together and then wrote the word on a transparent sheet for projection), these five words ended up eliminating six other teams.
In the sixth and final round, they read out 10 words, and the two remaining teams wrote them all down and handed in the list. WCFRC had seven words correct -- very impressive -- and RCW had five. Playing in the audience at this point, I got four right.
I'm working on creating a sound file of the 10 words in the last round, with definitions and sentences, and will update this post with it when that's complete, so anyone who's interested will be able to play along.
Thanks to The Terraces on Sir Tyler for hosting the bee this year and all the great sponsors listed here, as well as the 18 other area organizations that competed.
Props to my teammates, Bruce Shuman, Carla Sarratt, and Jaz Theodore for upholding the honor of FOL! Jaz especially deserves thanks for stepping in at the last moment. I hope we all get to try again next year!
UPDATE (Sept. 21, 2015): I have created the sound file of the 10 words from the final round of the bee.
In case the embedded player doesn't work, you can find it at this link.
Have fun! If you play along, please let me know how you do!
