beignet: a pastry made from deep-fried dough and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar, a kind of French doughnut; savory versions of beignets are also popular as an appetizer, with fillings such as crawfish and shrimp (from Wikipedia)
Yesterday was the annual Atlanta Orthographic Meet, aka the spelling bee. I've written about this before (2009, 2008, 2007), but this is not the kids spelling bee you are probably imagining. Nobody is standing up reciting into a microphone, because we're all at our tables drinking beer! See my previous entries (linked above) for more about what this is.
They always like to start the bee, the first word in Round 1, with something topical. They had considered "trysts", but decided to instead recognize the Super Bowl win by the New Orleans Saints. "Fleur de lis" had multiple acceptable spellings, so they went with "beignet". I couldn't even get a foothold on spelling that. Couple that with one more error in the first round (of 20 words) and I got 18 right. You needed 19 to advance. Maybe next year!
Here's a sampling of this year's words:
Round 1: assassin, augur, steppe
Round 2: valence, tonneau, betel
Round 3: holusbolus, esurient, beadle
Round 4: houyhnhnm, hacek, syzygial
This year, again, there were two people tied at the end of Round 4, so they went into sudden death. Two rounds (words) later, they had a winner, and again Fred Roberts had come in second.
See more at www.atlantaopenorthographicmeet.org .
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