WTF Stories of the Week

[Kevy Baby]

Spelling Bee Finalist Eliminated on the Word “Girlfriend”

Christopher Heck, a finalist at last week’s Scripps National Spelling Bee, was eliminated when he was unable to spell the word “girlfriend.” Bee champion David Tidmarsh then clinched the title by successfully spelling “autochthonous,” a word meaning “indigenous.”

The whole story

I was amused by the mother who said: “Last year in the Illinois state competition he was knocked out when he failed to spell ‘popularity’ correctly,” she said. “It was a word he had no concept of or experience with.”

As opposed to the person who won the contest with a word he uses every day: "autochthonous"