{"id":281,"date":"2009-07-02T14:16:56","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T14:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=281"},"modified":"2009-06-30T14:26:13","modified_gmt":"2009-06-30T14:26:13","slug":"british-spelling-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/02\/british-spelling-winners\/","title":{"rendered":"British Spelling Winners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesspellingbee.co.uk\/Competition\/GrandFinalResults.aspx\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/spelling-bee-winners-300x211.jpg\" alt=\"The Times Spelling Bee Winners\" title=\"The Times Spelling Bee Winners\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-284\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/spelling-bee-winners-300x211.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/spelling-bee-winners.jpg 328w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The first big spelling contest in the UK has been decided. A talented trio from St Martin\u2019s School in Middlesex beat teams from all over the country to take the title of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesspellingbee.co.uk\/Competition\/Default.aspx\">The Times Spelling Bee Champions 2009<\/a> at the Grand Final in London on June 23rd.<\/p>\n<p>So what kind of word challenges did the winners face? Well, in the quick fire round (the team had to spell as many words in 2 minutes as they could), they spelled <em>contemporaneous <\/em>and <em>rehearsal <\/em>in seconds, no pause for thought. From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesspellingbee.co.uk\/Competition\/GrandFinalResults.aspx\">highlights <\/a>I\u2019ve seen, that\u2019s what made the St Martin\u2019s team winners \u2013 not only could they spell the words correctly, they could spell them quickly. <\/p>\n<p>Other competitors were tripped up by words such as <em>troglodyte <\/em>and <em>pterodactyl<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>Compared to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spellingbee.com\/\">Scripps Spelling Bee<\/a> (the major American competition) however, it seems the British have a ways to go. Perusing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesspellingbee.co.uk\/Competition\/SampleWordList.aspx\">sample word list<\/a> for The Times competition, I can\u2019t say there are any words I haven\u2019t seen before, compared with the final of the Scripps, which threw up zingers like <em>schizaffin<\/em>. Any kid who can spell that, let alone know the definition definitely deserves a prize. Let\u2019s hope The Times Spelling Bee continues on to become as successful (and difficult!) as the Scripps. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first big spelling contest in the UK has been decided. A talented trio from St Martin\u2019s School in Middlesex beat teams from all over the country to take the title of The Times Spelling Bee Champions 2009 at the Grand Final in London on June 23rd. So what kind of word challenges did the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,35,13,44],"tags":[133,132,44],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-events","category-spelling","category-words","tag-scripps-spelling-bee","tag-times-spelling-bee","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}