Tonight a Spelling Bee champion will be crowned in America. Unlike the Kentucky Derby there is no chance that one of the competitors here will be shot if they come up lame. Most likely. This competition marks the annual pinnacle of Indian American intellectual flexing, and we can almost guarantee a Thomas Friedman op-ed tomorrow.
Tonight we (Indian Americans) make up for all of the incidents where we got picked last in gym class or that one time we didn’t make the high school badminton team because we cut our head open and had to get like a whole bunch of stiches the night before tryouts and were in the emergency room until very late at night and the doctor said that we should stay away from all strenuous physical activity for at least a week but we tried out anyways…and got cut, from the badminton team, which even our other more nerdy friends made it onto.
Throughout the rest of the day please check this post for updates. I might be a little behind some of you during parts of the day but I will hopefully be online for the championship round this evening which will be televised on ABC.
Here are the desi horses in the race starting from Round 4 onwards. This is how it works. If you see a word appear under their picture it means they have been eliminated and should be banished forever from our thoughts. There is an ages old Scottish saying that is quite appropriate here: “There can be only one.”
I haven’t seen such a line-up of pictures since the Dream Team.
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Now, I hate to bet on little kids but my money is on Samir. He has this look that just says “I’m going to eat you alive. You just don’t know it yet.” I am often wrong though.
You can all follow along here. If I missed a kid then let me know in the comments.
Update 1 (4:10 PST) : I thought we should take a look at the “final four.”
Here is the scouting report on Rajiv:
Rajiv is a 13-year-old spelling whiz from Chesterfield who breezed through the first four rounds of the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee here on Wednesday.
His spelling success means the eighth-grader from Sperreng Middle School, who is making his fourth consecutive appearance at the national bee, will advance to today’s final competition rounds…Last year, Rajiv placed fourth in the national competition. This year, he said, he hopes to beat that performance…
On Wednesday, Rajiv – who plays soccer, tennis, and chess, among other hobbies – was performing like a champion-in-waiting…
After studying five or six hours a day in anticipation for this week’s competition, it’s no wonder Rajiv exuded more confidence than jitters during Wednesday’s competition.
“I’m a little nervous but I’m used to it,” said the veteran spelling bee contestant. “The experience helps…” [Link]
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p>Her friend and fellow Kansan Aishwarya (TMBSITW) went down, but our girl Kavya is still in the hunt (and is not using the Spelling Bee to get into Harvard):
City: Olathe
Age: 10
Grade/school: Fifth grade, Regency Place Elementary
A troublesome word: “Steenjiz,” from the Afrikaans language
Verbatim: “I like Latin and Greek words a lot, getting into the root. It’s a little easier to put together than French, which depends on etymological rules…” [Link]
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p>Tomorrow could turn into an absolute nightmare for members of the press if Nidharshan Subra Anandasivam of Texas wins but the press might need a shot in the arm to get off of their lazy asses.
The crowd cheered after the eighth grade student from St. Joseph Academy in Brownsville politely corrected Dr. Marty Lewis, English professor at the University of Brownsville, and continued to spell the winning word.
“I was pretty confident but not 100 percent sure (I would win again)” Nidharshan said holding his first place trophy. “I have a talent for spelling…” [Link]
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p>Correcting an English professor? Gangsta. The dark horse in this race seems to be Michael Christie of New York. There isn’t a lot known about him:
Michael Christie never wavered in his defense of The Post-Standard/WCNY Spelling Bee championship. The soft-spoken eighth-grader from Clay watched his last competitor, Humma Sheikh, misspell whilom in round 10 of the competition Saturday at the WCNY studios on Old Liverpool Road. Whilom means former.
Christie, an eighth-grader at Bishop Grimes, then spelled dirndl on his turn. Dirndl is a dress style copied from Alpine peasant costumes.
Then, Christie had to spell one more word to make it back-to-back wins. He correctly spelled tephra, which is solid material ejected into the area during a volcanic explosion. [Link]
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p>Tephra? Any non-geologist that knows that word scores points with me.
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p>Update 2 (4:23p.m. PST): Just a reminder that on the West Coast the Bee will be taped delayed by three hours. East coast readers can feel free to post comments but I will be Live Blogging for the West Coast.
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p>Update 3 (6:10 p.m. PST): Screw it. I just can’t wait. I will just update live EST.
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p>Kavya got taken out and so did Nidharshan Subra Anandasivam. There were sighs of relief from the press corp when the latter misspelled “paillon.” Only two desis left. So much hangs in the balance.
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p>Update 4 (6:30 p.m. PST): Only one left. Can Rajiv come through for us??
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p>Update 5 (6:44 p.m. PST): It is over. The dream is dead. There will be no joy in Brownsville this year.
Where do we go from here? Where can we turn to? If the Canadian wins then Friedman will still write his article.
That was me.
I’m picking either “Kobe” Rajiv or “Spell My Name” Nidharshan. Rajiv seems destined, but Nidharshan would be a moral coup.
Brown Fob: The Great Indian Nod? The Nod of Acknowledgement??
The only one I have been familiar with is the one with his eyes closed..mouth in a line so straight you would think heÂ’s been practicing..(I guess he has beenÂ…since hes been doing it all my life)…and the slow bob of the head…if you are an indian, and understand the subtle differences between the various indian nods, its basically the nod of exasperation, the “I have sowed my seeds (No pun intended), now I am bearing the penance” nod.
no more brownies left in the bowl…
blah.
Ah! The Great Indian Nod! Annoying yet comforting
ah… so I just realized that words under their names are the incorrect spellings given… not the correctly spelled words that they went out on. I was wondering dialylus was about.
they are gone. all gone. but upside to it? all girls remaining. yayyy.
It’s got to be Saryn Hooks. Did the announcer pronounce “Anandasivan” as “Annaseon”…can imagine them heaving a sigh of relief not to have to deal with that one. I have a long surname myself, which stumps most.
Nope, Hooks is gone. How about the Canadian?
Go Finola! She’s up now.
Rajiv got standing ovation. Izzat was one of the word in the final rounds.
ursprache indeed 🙂 that girl was amazing.
kundalini and izzat.. gotta love the brown words… and word up to the females… top 3 😉
So now we can’t even win spelling bees?!!! 🙁
we can win bee’s but we believe in sharing ;)… i wished finola won.. i really liked her..and for a canadian to win would’ve been awesome, eh? 🙂 but i guess garden state got the enchilada…
yeah and did you hear how they pronounced it? “Is-it”!! yikes! and is “kilim” pronounced “khilim” I heard a distinct kh sound – just wanted to know any turkish/persian? friends around here who know.
sorry, that was “izzat” pronounced “is-it”.
n!
I was thinking about holding a spelling bee in Hindi. It would probably stop only by exhaustion. Kind of shows how irrational English is in some ways.
I think they give the desis harder words, like a smart person bias. Rebecca Sealfon won on coterie!? This was the chick who screamed the last word into the mic like she was on PCP.
Anyway, she took out this Indian guy, whose parents they never showed on TV during the last round.
I’m with conspiracy dude – I was watching with my sister, and we both observed that the girls had more phonetic-friendly words, so that if they had no idea what it was, they could still sound it out. Plus, it seemed that the Indian kids got more German-origin words, as opposed to the easier to figure out Latin-ones.
So long as the spelling bee was relegated to ESPN2, Indians could have. But in primetime-network TV, with nigger advertising costs, there is enormous pressure to have a media-familiar face. Maybe it will be the spelling bee equivalent of the Black Sox.
Megha
The bobble-headesque nod..which is used for “yes” as well as “no”. There’s a subtle difference which is evident only to fellow desis. You gotta watch the eyes too 🙂
OH CRAP!! – that’s “bigger advertising costs” Look on your keyboards folks, B and N are right next to each other.
This ranks up there with my father’s claim that the NBA was fixed so that New York and Chicago would play in the conference finals every year. You’re both well on your way to unclehood 😉
Holy shit! I thought only my dad said stuff like that.
conspiracy was exactly what i was thinking while watching it.
either way, Rajiv was a stud. that dude was just oozing with confidence.
anyway, i thought it was interesting that all the finalists of indian origin were south indian.
Christ, what else do we have left- if not the Spelling Bee- to build our collective Brown hopes upon?
You’re both well on your way to unclehood 😉
My niece and nephew live in the Bay Area – everyone needs a crazy uncle.
Is it just me, or does it look like Shruti’s about 26 years old?
And Rajiv couldn’t spell “heiligenschein”?! Come on, anybody can spell that!
I was personally rooting for Anjay.
chick pea
Touche! Great to see some really talented kids! Just hope they don’t work through every weekend and night prepping for this! 🙂
Duh. How many Rao’s, Rai’s and Vij’s get in any multisyllabic sparring? 🙂
Well, there’s still UPS. (Right, Chick Pea?) And Michael “Heckuva Job Brownie” Brown, now reinvented as a whistleblower.
When I was young my dad would always tell me South Indians were so smart because they eat fish. Being a primarily vegetarian Guju it was a plasuible explanation to me. 🙂
hey number 6…
but of course… there is ALWAYS UPS… always… 🙂
boston desi dudette:
are you kidding? these kids likley breath and imbibe dictionaries galore.. study words like white on rice.. well hopefully some have lives outside of this bee fest…a lot of them were repeat performers.. who had come to the national bee before.. some prepared over 5 years and such.. it’s like the superbowl of geeks.. and as quoted before… geeks are chic ;)… it was sad to watch when they misspelled words.. my heart goes out to them… so close… yet not close enough…. well kudos to gardent state chica… (but dammit.. fiona.. why couldn’t you spell that german word.. you dad is GERMAN!)
No, sadly, they are of a type. If they say it at the same time, they can even be in stereo! (groans at own bad joke)
Now all we need is a Sepia Mutiny Online Scrabble Competition. Ohhhh yeaaaah…. (I’m the nerd that took travel scrabble with me to India. Don’t we all love to spell?)
Abhi, i cannot believe you live blogged this. Then again, i can. enuff said.
Anyone going to watch that Akeelah movie? see if any desis represent in the film?
Abhi: My statement that South Indians were COMPARATIVELY “smarter” than “other” Indians was based on what I observed and witnessed in my St. Xavier’s High School, St. Xavier’s College and Gujarat University, back in Ahmedabad. Even today the Indian Army, Navy etc.. is full of “non-south Indians” at lower rung of the ladder, while at the top are these south Indians. Same with academia. “Smarter” is a relative term. You could be book smart and a real disaster when it comes to “Street Smart”. Most “Gujaratis” are what one may call “street smart’ !! Ask any Patel or Shah. I do not think eating “fish” or “pig” or other such staples makes one “smarter” than other. If that was true then all the vegetarians of the world would be “dumb”. Mohandas Karamchand was a “vegetarian”, yet he outsmarted the Bull Dog Churchill, at least that’s what they tell me… Love…dad. Now.. go eat your FISH !!
Just check out the words the kids spelt and judge for yourself. Most of the words the canadian got were so tough. Compare “maieutic” and “aubade”.( Now you know the word given to the canadian) Also see Michel christies words, they were the toughest. So if the the words were picked up in random order how come the winner got all the short easy words.
Somethings fishy……..
Check out Michel’s words…
“epityphlitis, coryphaeus, appenzell” for rouds 8 to 10
and catherines words same round.
“synusia, towhee, Shedu”
Well, tell me it was not in some way fixed……
Chick Pea:
It was interesting though – getting the v instead of the w seemed more like an unfortunate mistake, or a serious issue of nerves!
I know I couldn’t do it. I do hope they do other stuff too and don’t grow up resenting having missed some important elements of their childhood. But, this is great too! 🙂
agree with comment number 26