The
final Stein Club Spelling Bee, a.k.a.
the
Atlanta Open Orthographic
Meet.
Listen to the 50 words of the 2000 Bee.
The bee was held, as always, on the last Saturday of
January, i.e., the day before the Super Bowl,
at the venerable Stein "best-juke-box-in-town" Club, in Atlanta, at 8th and
Peachtree,
starting at 7 PM and ending, after two wild and hilarious orthographic hours, at
9.
This was the 30th annual bee. Because of the weather, the turnout was the lowest in years. Many probably assumed the event would be cancelled. The threat of icy roads even kept Committee member Karen Peterson, who lives in Greenville, South Carolina, from coming (although the bee is nevertheless riddled, as it were, with words she proposed).
Congratulations, Winner Larry English!
(Rumors he changed his name to get in shape for the
contest are evidently true.)
You can play, too. The whole thing. Right here. This
is a bee where contestants write down their spellings simultaneously,
rather than the traditional spelling out loud all by yourself, one at a
time. At the Stein Club, you hand in your paper along with everyone else
in the round and wait to hear your name, which means you got enough right to get
you into the next round. Another big departure from the traditional
bee:
Scores are cumulative, one point per right spelling. Theoretically, you
could miss 5 words in Round 1 and still win handily, provided your total number
right was the highest. All of which means you can here closely simulate
the Stein Club Spelling Bee experience.
For the most authentic results, get sixty beer-favoring friends together before
you start.
Print a round, then click to
hear each word spoken, write down your spelling on your printout, and then, at the end of the round,
click to see
the answers.
Begin. Commence. Let the bee be begun.
This bee brought to you by Chris Lautz, Stein Club proprietor,
and the Stein Club Spelling Bee Committee, your most devoted beekeepers
(often apiaried, never beequaled):
Dyna Kohler
Ed Martin
Karen Peterson
Terrill Soules
Committee Member emeritus: Dr. Eugene Brown (winner 1981, 1982, 1983)Sometimes there are alternate spellings. We accept all alternates to be found in a standard dictionary. All modern alternates, that is. Variants current 800 years ago don't count.
Not all meanings are to be found in all dictionaries.
The definitions here are a conflation, paraphrase, or, occasionally, a direct quote, of the definitions to be found in these magnificent lexicons: Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster 3rd International, American Heritage 3rd Edition, Random House Unabridged 2nd Edition, Funk & Wagnalls (1947).
An article about the Stein Club Bee appears on page 10 of the January 2000 issue of the Oxford American (the first John Grisham serialized novel issue)