Congratulations to Anurag Kashyap, winner of the 2005 National Spelling Bee. May this bee be like an appoggiatura, driving you onward to even greater events in life…
OK, OK, that was stretching it a bit. I always have to work the winning word in there somehow. And musical terms are really hard to work into a post like this except as metaphors! 🙂
Samir Patel and Aliya Deri, you deserve congratulations as well, having tied for second place. Given the difficulty of the words you had to spell to get there, that’s quite an accomplishment.
Congrats also to Finola Hackett, who, in Canada’s first year at the Scripps Spelling Bee, managed to rise all the way to tie for eleventh place. Great work for a complete newcomer to the Bee, and more reason that Scripps should just give in and call it International already. I hadn’t the slightest clue about ‘nisse’ myself, and I’m a spelling bee veteran. And you still have another year to try for!
Katharine Close, you’ve got another year left as well… so good luck on your last chance. I probably would’ve left the last letter off ‘laetrile’, if I hadn’t mangled it even more…
Bah, I’ll just say congratulations to all 273(!) of you who participated in the Bee. It’s a tough competition– and I say this from experience, having been there myself in 1997…
I watched a few minutes of it during round 5.
I probably would have spelled “appoggiatura” with one “p”.
Having actually come across the word “laetrile” before, I knew how to spell it, though I’m not sure whether I would have recognized it as the word I’d come across before. I might have, with the definition…
Anyway, congrats to the spellers.
Hey, thanks for the congrats, as I was one of the 273. It really is a tough competition to be a part of, and I’m glad so many people take notice.