By Petula Dvorak and Jonathan Mummolo
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 31, 2008

Without warning, one contestant came face to face last night with something that you don't want to encounter while you are appearing live on network television: prosopopoeia. It's a rhetorical device, and, despite the poise and ability he had shown through many grueling rounds, Sidharth Chand, 12, was knocked out.

The last competitor remaining, Sameer Mishra, 13, was challenged with "guerdon." A guerdon is a reward. Sameer, who is from West Lafayette, Ind., got guerdon. And the guerdon.

Yes, it was a spelling bee. And yes, it was

H-U-G-E.

The 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee is a Super Bowl of American academia, a place where 12-year-olds who can spell ophthalmoplegia are TV stars and spelling judges are hounded for autographs.

In the end, some of the nation's outstanding young word experts were winnowed down to Sidharth, a seventh-grader, who wore a tie and a pullover sweater, and Sameer, an eighth-grader in an orange shirt.

They were the last survivors of a dozen finalists; that dozen remained after youthful spellers battled all afternoon, starting with 288 contestants, going through 45 spellers in three rounds of semifinals and ending with 12 who advanced to the final round. The winner gets $35,000 and other prizes.

"Over the past 10 years, it has really, really grown," said Mary Brooks, the head judge of the bee, who has been involved with the competition for more than 30 years. As movies, books and even a musical have flooded popular culture with spelling bee stories, Brooks has seen her popularity soar, too.

"I guess I'm famous here in D.C. They ask me for autographs; they follow me," said Brooks, who is otherwise occupied as a junior high school teacher in Des Moines, Iowa. This week, she was tracked down by fans who recognized her in a hat and glasses and pleaded for her signature.

As the bee has become more popular, judges have had to work to make the word list harder and more varied, Brooks said.

Words that won in the past seem quaint: knack, 1932; vignette, 1952; catamaran, 1959; abalone, 1968.

In 2002, the winning word was prospicience; in 2004, autochthonous; last year, serrifine.

The bee has its beloved favorites:

Matthew Evans, a home-schooled 13-year-old from Albuquerque, made his fifth appearance at the national bee. Usually in the finals, he was the sentimental and logical favorite to win this year, the last in which he is eligible, aged out after eighth grade.

Spellers love watching Evans as he takes the microphone and confidently works through the word origin, the Latin roots and Greek beginnings and the pronunciation to come up with the correct spelling.

But in round six, he stood on stage, quiet.

"He doesn't know it. Oh. My. God. He doesn't know it," one speller quietly said, watching his hesitation.

"He totally knows it. He's just pausing for dramatic effect," another added.

But Matthew didn't know "secernent," spelling it with an "-ant" at the end. He hung his head low even as the audience and his fellow spellers gave him a standing ovation. He stayed in the comfort room behind the stage for almost an hour until he emerged, his face a little red and blotchy, for a string of interviews.

Fans hugged him. "In every curse there is a blessing, and in every blessing a curse," a fellow speller told Matthew. They asked for autographs.

"I really appreciate all of this, all the support," he said.

And the bee has its characters:

When Jahnavi Iyer, a 14-year-old from Enola, Pa., was stuck on "solidungulate," she asked for the language of origin, the definition and the pronunciations, as most competitors do. Stumped, she finally asked "for an easier word."

The judges laughed out loud.

Another legend also is making a fifth appearance: Tia Thomas, a 13-year-old flutist and skier from a town deep in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

She was clearly worried about her seventh-round word, "canicular." "May I have the California pronunciation?" she asked.

She finished third in the competition, going out on another one of those words that would knit the brow of the most orthographically adept of any age: opificer.

Besides Californian, the judges heard Southern drawls, Texas twangs and a Jamaican lilt. One year, they were stumped by a New Zealander's pronunciation of letters.

Spellers came from across the United States as well as Jamaica, the U.S. Virgin Islands, South Korea, New Zealand and Canada.

Most of the words represent things the children have never encountered: advocaat, a Dutch eggnog, or hidradenitis, the inflammation of a sweat gland.

There is one word Meghan Reynolds, a home-schooled 14-year-old from West Chester, Pa., never wants to encounter: Bercy.

It's a creamy sauce made from chicken or veal stock, thickened with butter and flour and enhanced with shallots, white wine and parsley.

Meghan was stumped. She could spell all the ingredients, she told the judges.

But ultimately, her guess that it ended with an "i" put an end to her run.

She has been spelling in bees since third grade, and the national bee was her dream.

"I was doing it before it became so popular," she said. "I'm so glad I got to the semifinals."

She won't be eating anything with Bercy sauce.

The spellers practice daily, some for several hours a day, some online. Others listen to recordings of spellings as they sleep.

But spelling isn't a way of life.

This was evidenced by a note written on the bee bulletin board asking fellow spellers to join in for a game of soccer on the Mall. Interested players were asked to call the speller's room, or they could leave their names, right "hear."

Staff writer Martin Weil contributed to this report.