The return of Samir Patel and the Spelling Bee
A year ago I was covering the the National Spelling Bee and the greatness of Samir Patel, the National Spelling Bee representative of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. His unequivocal charm and seemingly endless vocabulary made him a favorite in last year's tournament. Little did we know that he couldn't spell "eremacausis," meaning a gradual oxidation from exposure to air and moisture. His slip up dropped him to 14th place.
Samir may have stumbled last year, but he's back for his fifth and final year. I smell a victory. I don't know his off season preparation but judging by the hundreds of pages of notes and vocabulary words on the bee's Web site, he's probably been busying learning such esoteric words like podsnappery and vanaspati.