November 9th Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Jenny Brown
2nd place: Jonathan Lill
3rd place: Octavia Silva

All three qualify for the December 7th season finals!

Only one chance left to qualify for the finals -- come on out and spell on November 23rd!


From left: Winner Jenny Brown, 3rd place Octavia Silva, 2nd place Jonathan Lill, founder bobby and co-host Jen.

October 12th Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Wilson Southerland
2nd place: David Zheng
Tied for 3rd place: Trent Williams and Barry Heard

All qualify for the December 7th season finals!

Bee Photos by Deneka Peniston

Here's the complete gallery.

September 28th Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Dominique Vance
2nd place: Trent Williams
3rd place: David Zheng

All qualify for the December 7th season finals!

September 14th Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Wilson Southerland
2nd place: Jenny Brown
3rd place: Jonathan Landsman

All qualify for the December 7th season finals!

Oleomargarine and Piccalilli

I have recently come into possession of this vintage spelling book:

I especially enjoyed the introduction; poor spelling is like dingy linen!

After you learn to spell "menu," move on to "oleomargarine"!

We have used "piccalilli" in the spelling bee before -- spellers, take note!

August 31st Winners

August 31st was an enormous bee! Welcome to all the newcomers who found out about us on Twitter.

Congratulations to:

1st place: Ben O'Donnell
2nd place: Carolyn D'Aquila
3rd place: Wilson Southerland

All qualify for the December 7th season finals!

Williamsburg Spelling Bee on NPR

Adults Put the 'Bee' in Orthography (streaming audio, 3:57) - from today's Morning Edition on NPR.

Spelling bees are not just for kids, as more and more spelling bees for adults sprout up across the country. A bar in Brooklyn, New York, has been hosting one for about five years. That bee attracts people just looking for fun and those who really know their stuff.

Thanks to reporter Ben Calhoun! Shout-out to Carolyn D'Aquila, winner of the bee attended by Mr. Calhoun.

August 17 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Trent Williams
Tied for 2nd place: Ji Seuk, Jonathan Lill, David Zheng

All qualify for the December 7th season finals!

August 3rd Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Jonathan Lill
2nd place: David Zheng

Both qualify for the December 7th season finals!

Incidentally, normally we qualify the top three winners for the Finals, but this time around we had a four-way tie for third, so we qualified only the top two, but gave out four third-place prizes. The paninis are delicious.

Jonathan won not only the usual first place prize -- a $25 bar tab -- but also Roller Derby tickets!

Jonathan also went out for a smoke break mid-bee and came back with a tiny, chirping sparrow perched on his hand. Like Snow White. Seriously. Numerous photos were taken. Send one in to the blog if you have photographic evidence of the Spelling Sparrow Incident.

Williamsburg Spelling Bee Season 9 Final Results

Congratulations to Williamsburg Spelling Bee Season 9 Winner Carolyn D'Aquila!



Here is the complete top 5:

1. Carolyn D'Aquila
2. Dominique Vance
3. Marc Palatucci
4. Jonathan Lill
5. Lauren Gilbert



And, of course, congratulations to everyone who made it to the Finals: Jan O'Leary, Stacey Choi, Jenny Brown, Wilson Southerland, Greg Hannahs, Ben Speaker, Mary Speaker, Dawid Wiacek, Karen Hudes, Eric Malson, Gwyneth Connell, Jake Cremins, Chris Antionacci, Paulina Szyrmer, Trent Williams, Sandy Bell, James Kibler, and Tamara Glenny.



Come out August 3rd to begin Season 10! Open to all!



Click here for the complete photo set.

June 8 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Carolyn D'Aquila

2nd place: Jonathan Lill

3rd place: Stacey Choi

May 25 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Carolyn D'Aquila
2nd place: Jan O'Leary
3rd place: Jonathan Lill

All three qualify for the June 22nd season finals! ( June 8 is the next bee and your last chance to qualify!)

By the way, 2nd place winner Jan will be back in England for the Finals, and I have it on reasonably credible hearsay that frequent winner Wilson will be on the road. Who will be our Season 9 winner? It's not Britain's Got Talent, but I'm still in suspense.

Heidi Montag can't spell, or else thinks Mexicans keep pigs in their chimneys

From Us Weekly: "I'm ready to get out of the pig flue country."

Williamsburg Spelling Bee on the Recession Activities blog

A Puppy Dressed as a Bee

From cuteoverload.com

May 11 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Dominique Vance
2nd place: Jenny Brown
3rd place: Wilson Southerland

All three qualify for the June 22nd season finals! Next bee is May 25!

April 27 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Carolyn D'Aquila
2nd place: Greg Hannahs
3rd place: Ben and Mary Speaker

Ben and Mary are brother and sister. When they tied for third, we didn't even realize they had the same last name until we were mid-announcement.

All four qualify for the June 22nd season finals! Next bee is May 11!

April 13 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Greg Hannahs
Tied for 2nd: Dawid Wiacek & Karen Hudes

All three qualify for the June 22nd season finals! Next bee is April 27!

March 31 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Wilson Southerland
2nd place: Eric Malson
3rd place: Gwyneth Connell

All three qualify for the June 22nd season finals! Come back April 13 for more booze and wordplay.

March 16 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Jake Cremins
2nd place: Chris Antionacci
3rd place: Wilson Southerland

All three qualify for the June 22nd season finals! Come on out to our next bee on March 30th to try your hand at orthographical competition.

March 2 Winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Wilson Southerland
2nd place: Paulina Szyrmer
Tie for 3rd: Trent Williams and Sandy Bell

All four winners qualify for the June 22nd season finals!

Come on out to our next bee on March 16th!

Feb 16th winners

Congratulations to:

1st place: Jonathan Lill
Tie for 2nd: James Kibler and Marc Palatucci

All three winners qualify for the June 22nd season finals!

Come on out to our next bee on March 2nd!

Season Nine Is Proceeding Apace

The bee began its new season on February 2nd! We cut off signups at 25 people, leaving a few souls vowing to come earlier next time.

The winners were:

1st Place - Tamara Glenny
2nd Place - Lauren Gilbert
3rd Place - Jonathan Lill

These three contestants are qualified to compete in the F-I-N-A-L-S on June 22nd. (They also received a $25 bar tab, a $15 bar tab, and a free sandwich, respectively).

The next bee is this Monday, February 16th! Signup begins at 7pm.

Congratulations to Season 8 Winner Robert Moy

Congratulations to Season Winner Robert Moy!


Read the Gothamist coverage here. Photo by Billy Parker of Gothamist.

Robert Moy, who teaches gifted kids at P.S. 334, will be receiving a 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary! (Courtesy of, of course, the Oxford English Dictionary). The graphic below is in celebration of the OED's 80th birthday -- or, as we like to say at the bee, octentennial.*


Moy also took home $150 cash from Pete's, as well as a trophy, free drinks, and some cupcakes. 2nd place Jonathan Lill and 3rd place Carolyn D'Aquila also took home beaucoup prizes, including Concise Oxford English Dictionaries, subscriptions to the Visual Thesaurus, and more.


Click here for Flickr gallery from the Finals.

* I made that up.

Online Spelling Bee Practice

Want to practice your spelling online? Try the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee. The first word I got when playing was "host." But by the third word, I was asked to spell "unpropitiously."

After skating through "manumit" and "cinnabar," I got stumped on "reseau" (a grid of fine lines in lacemaking or celestial measurement), then nailed glaucous, jeroboam, and cislunar before striking out on "ecdysis" ( a shedding of the cuticle in arthropods) and "naumachia" (a naval spectacle or mock sea battle put on by the ancient Romans). So, um, it gets hard!

Here's a blog post explaining how Visual Thesaurus "uses the latest computational tools to shed new light on the inner workings of the English language." Complete with graphs!

Enjoy!

A Few Updates

Our bee is currently featured on Brooklyn Based!

There are two more bees left in the current season -- Nov 10 and Nov 24 -- before our December 8th Finals. After that, the bee will go on holiday hiatus and return in February 2009.

Last night's bee was intense! We had a full roster of 18 spellers, and a few groups sadly turned away. Next time, arrive early (and often!)

Here's me and bobby at the Manhattan bee we recently hosted at Housing Works:

When spelling goes wrong

if only your kitties were so brilliant

more cat pictures

and afterwards, they can all go see a movie for 15% off...

Here is a CBS article on senior spelling bees.

Long is a finalist of the AARP National Senior Spelling Bee just about every year. But it seems every time he's about to claim the top prize, he's thrown one of those dreaded culinary terms....

After misspelling "cappelletti" in 2005, he ate the hat-shaped pasta for a week. When he missed "caiparina" - a Brazilian cocktail - it drove him to drink.

New Season Schedule

Step up to the mic and rule at Pete’s Candy Store’s
WILLIAMSBURG SPELLING BEE
with BOBBYBLUE & JENISFAMOUS
Every Other MONDAY
No cover, open to all
Signup at 7pm, Bee at 7:30

Season 8:
July 21
August 4 & 18
Sept 1 - NO BEE FOR LABOR DAY
Sept 15 & 29
Oct 13 & 27
Nov 10 & 24
Dec 8 FINALS

Quick Hits

The new season of spelling began this Monday, July 21st. One speller sent me an email afterwards thanking us for the sprachgefühl, an exciting word* you might enjoy deploying in the future.

July 21st winner Jonathan Lill emailed to bring this shirt, which I thought you might also enjoy, to my attention:



And finally, you might enjoy this post on my regular blog: “Perpetrating” the Lyrics: A Critical Exegesis of the 1989 Young MC Hit “Bust a Move”.

*New! From the same people who brought you "schadenfreude" and "weltzschmertz," enjoy sprachgefühl!

Congratulations to Season Winner Tamara Glenny!

Tamara Glenny (center) came in victorious in our June 23rd finals, spelling "aesculapian" correctly (among many other words), and taking home a $200 grand prize, as well as a "Spelling Bee Winner" tote bag and gift certificate from sponsor Neighborhoodies, and other fun prizes.


Kudos also go out to 2nd place winner Jonathan Lill (top left) and 3rd place winner Jonathan Proctor (bottom left).

"The Impotence of Proofreading"

deliciously ironic newspaper correction

From the Washington Post:

A May 31 Metro article about the Scripps National Spelling Bee misspelled last year's winning word. The correct spelling is serrefine.

spelling news

Did you know that the National Spelling Bee has protestors?

I was already well-aware of the "spelling reform" movement, but this article in the WSJ does add one hilarious fact about the movement of which I was unaware:

The movement reached its apogee on Aug. 20, 1906, when President Theodore Roosevelt, a terrible speller, officially changed the spelling of 300 English words.

What seemed like a good idea -- changing "through" to "thru," and so on -- turned into a humiliating disaster. Newspapers mocked him as "Rozevult." Congress voted 142-24 to overturn the order.

Also in spelling news, spelling bee "icon" Samir Patel is finished at 14 and moves on with his life as a teen genius. (Samir, you are welcome in Williamsburg when you turn 21!)

Spelling Bee on Vanity Fair's blog

The spelling bee is on Vanity Fair's blog! Thanks to Amy Boyle for the delightfully smart reporting.

Bee News

The next spelling bee is Monday, April 28th!

7:30pm
Open to first 20 signups (arrive before 7:30 to sign up)
Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer in Williamsburg (L to Lorimer)
Free

And if you're looking for something to do in the great isle of Manhattan, check out our new project ... The New York City Spelling Bee.

we're in a cool multimedia news article

Check out Nerdy Games Rock Bars on NYC24.com.

March 31st update

Congratulations to this week's winners:

1st - Suzun Tansil
2nd - Melissa Bourgeois
3rd - Paul Vernisi

Also, check out our TV spot on WNBC's "1st Look"! (This is from two bees ago, when I was on tour in LA, so bobbyblue and his friend Laverne were hosting).

Next bee: April 14th!