Spelling

These are the words you must spell correctly to join the North End Franklin Spelling Team:

Breathe

Achieve

Competition...

Mysteries

Boundary

Awkward

Impatient

Laughed

Adequate

Happiest

Squeeze

Preference

Requirement

Character

Pollution

Neighbor

 Blouse

Release

Coffee

Extinct

Temporary

Directory

Sentence

Cushion

Illustration

Adventure

Division

Pursue

Autumn

Political

Bonus words:

Civilian

Camouflage

Infinite

The sixth grader who spelled best today got 27/30 +3. Pretty good. 

I remember the fifth grade spelling bee very clearly. I made it to the top five, and I was the last girl standing. Guarantee was the word that took me down. "At least I was the best girl," I remember saying to my parents. (What kind of a thing is that to say?)

I've always loved spelling. Spelling is poetic in its attention to words themselves, to the sounds they make, to the merit they embody without the bounds of sentence structure and setting. Unlike a math problem that will inevitably take me ages to complete, spelling is the kind of problem I can solve. Like solfege, there's a pattern that's appealing and musical to the letters and the way they form sounds. It feels good to nail it, doesn't it?

In college, I corrected papers and did research for a French linguistics professor. The diminutive woman with a mousy face would blink at me through round lenses and purse her lips as she dropped off files upon files of articles about "OE" and practice sheets of "eu." She would listen to recordings of sounds her students made into their computers and emailed at a certain date and time. I felt faintly akin to Eliza, who overheard and wondered at Henry Higgins, as I turned up the hip hop in my headphones and hunkered against the piles of paperwork in the common space of Old Main. I understand her, though, in a way: it's so comforting to see the pattern and to replicate it. Comparing and contrasting the sounds and meanings of words today with their etymological past can be fascinating. (It can also be deadly dull, as I learned from reading what her students thought of their homework assignments.)

But back to spelling, that lost art, the simple form of linguistic engagement, the puzzle. I recently found myself having to explain why I like playing Scrabble (never thought I'd have to...), and I think the simplest answer is the best: why, of COURSE, for the pure joy of spelling! Whatever else is there to do with a glass of wine beside a roaring fire on a blustering winter night?