cannoli: Sicilian pastry desserts; the singular is meaning “little tube”, with the etymology stemming from the Latin “canna”, or reed. Cannoli originated in Sicily and are an essential part of Sicilian cuisine. They are also popular in Italian American cuisine and in America are known as a general Italian pastry, while they are specifically Sicilian in origin. (from Wikipedia)
Last Saturday was the annual Atlanta Open Orthographic Meet (aka spelling bee), held at Manuel’s Tavern every year on the first Saturday after Valentine’s Day. As I’ve written before (in 2008 and 2007), this is probably not what you expect when you hear “spelling bee”. For one, nobody is getting up to a microphone to attempt to spell a word; for two, there’s beer.
I am a pretty good speller but clearly out of my league in this crowd. I used to make it out of Round 1 and try to get through Round 2, but the last two years I haven’t even made it past Round 1. This year you needed a perfect first round to advance, and I made my one mistake with “cannoli”. It was the one word I struggled with so I knew I was looking at a 19 or a 20, but this was the first time that a perfect 20 was necessary to advance.
Here’s a sampling of this year’s words:
Round 1: stimulus(!), glacier, conch, carafe
Round 2: colloquy, acetaminophen, lachrymose, aril
Round 3: graupel, vicereine, bulbul, capsaicin
Round 4: hyetal, echard, johnin, secesh
Obviously, by Round 3 and 4 you are dealing with words that few people have even heard of, and are nearly impossible to spell. So you have to start winging it. This year, after Round 4 there were still two people tied and so it moved into one-word-at-a-time sudden death rounds. Six of them.
It’s a lot of fun, especially after you’re eliminated and can focus your energies on drinking in earnest!