History was made moments ago at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. as Anamika Veeramani (from North Royalton) became the 9th Ohioan to win the Scripp’s National Spelling Bee.  Ohio now holds the record for most winners.  It has been 42 years between Buckeye victories,  The winning word: stromuhr (a rheometer designed to measure the amount and speed of blood flow through an artery).

Also new to me is the inclusion of a Canadian speller (an 11 year old girl from Toronto who would have been the youngest champion since the 1940s… but finishing in the top 10 is no small feat).  I was also unaware that a Puerto Rican speller is also eligible.

In the top 4  were Elizabeth Platz of Missouri, Shantanu Srivatsa of North Dakota and Adrian Gunawan of Arlington Heights, Illinois.

One highlight was the moment when Miss Platz told the announcer that his sentence using the word rhytidome was “boring.”  Unfortunately for Elizabeth, her attempt at brevity did not help in the spelling of the word derived from the Greek which is the bark external to the last formed periderm I don’t get it, either).  She spelled it r-h-y-t-o-d-o-m-e.  Darn schwa.

Congrats to all the spellers!  And welcome back to OHIO!

Sitting here watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee (not sure if it was taped prior or not… OH, it is live) but the staged musical bumpers are getting rather tiresome.  Get on with the competition already!  It almost seems like a televised round of golf with the commentators including Tom Bergeron (of Dancing with the Stars and America’s Funniest Home Videos (IS THAT STILL ON) fame… why?).  The audience is dead silent until a comment is made.  One speller very humorously attempted to spell her word and after said “DING?” indicating her belief that she mispelled the word.

The gentleman who announced the words attempted to put the spellers at ease with some of the sentences he used with the given word.

“Enough of this low-carb garbage!  Bring me the palatschinken.”

There were at least two words that are types of cheese: neufchatel and caerphilly.  Someone must have been hungry when they made the official list.  Two the three final spellers were friends who moved away from each other and met again on the national stage.

The winning word: laodicean spelled by a young Kansas girl named Kavya.

One word prompted me to make this post: baignoire.  It is derived from the French meaning either a box in the lowest level of a theatre OR a bathtub.  The pronouncer failed to give the second definition.  No numnah this year.