watching the national spelling bee on ESPN

By me putting the word "normally" at the beginning of the sentence? I have no idea, dude.

Actually wait, I have this idea: The only complete source for words in Round One and all rounds after Round Two is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and its Addenda Section, copyright 2002, Merriam-Webster, which contains over 470,000 word entries.

So any word that appears in an English text and can be verified against the master dictionary there is fair game -- you'd just need to be the kind of middle-school kid who happens to know how Merriam-Webster likes to transliterate Farsi.

Why were there four or five judges? It can't be that hard to judge - either you spelled the word or you didn't.
I mean...the announcer guy is giving out the words. So it could be assumed that the words have been researched and correct spellings are agreed upon?
Also - they ding the bell when the word is spelled wrong - in most game show type things, a dinging bell means you're right!
Those poor kids. They would get very confused if they had to go on "Family Feud". They'd answer a question correctly, the bell would ding, and they would walk off the stage all dejected and sad.

dan: there's always this

yeah...when I said what about spelling bees for adults my girlfriend said...there's always williamsburg.

i can't stop watching the EUONYM video over and over again
http://www.cnn.com/US/9705/29/spelling.bee.final/bee.39.espn.mov

i can't figure out what she said after EUONYM the first time round though..

"is what euonym good"? "As um euonyming name"???

wtf did she say???