SPELLING ANYTHING

Memorize and analyze your way to victory with this no-nonsense guide to spelling bees.

Vukoti, a 15-year-old spelling prodigy who made it to the hallowed Scripps National Spelling Bee six times and spelled the titular longest English word on the TV showLittle Big Shots, offers tips, tricks, and a systematic approach to spelling exceptionally hard words. He begins with a training regimen based on memorizing the official Words of the Champions list drawn from the half-million entries in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary in addition to self-made lists of difficult-to-spell items that, say, begin with silent consonants; he recommends studying at least one hour per day and having parents drill spellers in informal home bees. The book’s heart is a long section on spelling rules and patterns in English—i before e except after c, for example—as well as Latin, Greek, French, Maori, and the many other languages that have contributed words to the Merriam-Webster hoard. (Among the challenges bee competitors could face, the author notes, are the Old English fossils fyrd, gesithcundman, and hamsocn, and the German jawbreakers auftaktigkeit, sprachgefühl, and schuetzenfest.) Vukoti also proffers his list of 206 “roots” that constitute core components of many English words, from able (Latin for “capable of,” as in accountable) to xyl (Greek for “wood,” as in xylophone). He goes on to lay out bee-day strategies on getting over stage fright (“start by taking slow, deliberate breaths”) and asking the eight questions about a word’s dictionary entry that contestants are allowed to pose to judges. (Asking for alternate pronunciations might reveal crucial silent letters, he notes, while asking for the definition can distinguish between homonyms like stationary and stationery.) And should a reader win a regional bee—or the National Bee itself—Vukoti recommends preparing scripted soundbites for the ensuing media hoopla. 

Aimed at the younger-than-15 smart and studious reader who is both eligible for the Scripps Bee and serious about it, Vukoti’s book works both as a training manual and as an orthographic study in the translation of sounds into letters. The writing is straightforward, lucid, and practical (“Many words follow straightforward spelling rules, and second-guessing yourself by adding extra letters or using uncommon spelling patterns can steer you in the wrong direction”), but it also has enough erudite insight to allow grown-up linguistics mavens to learn new things as well—in English, Vukoti notes, “when you hear a ‘th’ sound at the end of a word, be very careful as to note whether it ends in \th\ (as in think) or \th\ (as in this). The voiceless \th\ will always be spelled with a -th (wreath, breath, loath) at the end of words, but the voiced \th\ will be spelled with a -the (wreathe, breathe, loathe).” In some grimly lyrical passages, the author’s prose breathes the indomitable spirit of the middle schooler in the arena, a hard-won readiness to fall and then to rise. (“Most people tend to remember their losses for the first few days, the first week, maybe the first month. However, the person who remembers until next year’s bee and has the burning desire to avenge their loss will eventually emerge as the next champion.”) Hardcore spellers will get both know-how and reassurance from Vukoti’s advice.

A useful and sometimes inspiring how-to for aspiring bee athletes, full of revealing information and canny tactics.