I know, I know, I’m a couple days late with this, but anyway… as a former spelling bee geek (it’s been 12 years, believe it or not), I have to post this…

Belated congrats to Kavya Shivashankar, winner of the 2009 National Spelling Bee— and, for that matter, to everyone else who made it into the Bee, as that alone is a major achievement. You all definitely weren’t Laodicean about spelling, that’s for sure!

And since I forgot to post this after the 2008 bee, extremely belated congrats to Sameer Mishra for winning a great guerdon in that year’s bee.

Edited to add: Oh, yeah, I forgot! Special thanks to the Spelling Bee staff for throwing in “blancmange” as a word this year. As a fan of Monty Python’s Science Fiction Sketch, I salute you; indeed, I even suggested the word on my blog three years ago.