Done with spelling

Transitions are rarely cut and dried, and this is no exception.

If you want to see my past in spelling, you can find it. Mostly. Aside from my MIA Panda Spell website, which has been gone for a year or two now. But I still look at the one remaining site that gives me my dopamine pellet: BeeNN. Yeah, it's a tabloid, about as nutritionally fulfilling as a spoonful of corn syrup, and each time I go there, I see less and less that really appeals to me.

I did post a comment a few weeks ago about my mindset regarding the recent use in a bee of one particular word—"wordle"—that knocked out an otherwise-excellent speller who wasn't familiar with either the word as officially defined, nor with the phenomenal word game that swept this country during the pandemic. I say good. Spellers need to get their noses out of the word lists sometimes and look at the world around them. If they can't spell a word that the vast majority of Americans know how to spell because of widespread exposure in society, that's on them, and there's no excuse.

But I'm no longer involved in bees on the inside. I'm not a fan of what the bee scene has become. For example, BeeNN is written by a past Scripps speller who is infamous for his harsh commentary; he has. to say the least, not exactly prevented toxic bee culture. His outbursts and negativity at Scripps for years earned him a ban from attending Scripps Bee Week years ago that may or may not be ongoing. And now he is heavily involved in the workings of at least a few major bees on the administrative side. At least he recognizes the beyond-potential of a conflict of interest between his blog and his involvement with bees.

But he's not the only reason behind why I am done.

I won't go into my discontinuation with Spelling Bee of China or Canada Super Spelling Bee. That ship sailed years ago; I have good memories and good, if distant, friendships with people in both camps, and I wish them all the best of luck going forward. I won't go much into Spell Pundit and its virtual monopoly on coaching for serious spellers. But in the last years of coaching, I realized that it was useless to coach without relying on online Spell Pundit resources, the likes of which required an ongoing subscription. And finally, I'll quickly touch on the regrettable-but-necessary phenomenon of official online bees during the COVID era, the likes of which resulted in rampant cheating. Spellers who engaged in cheating should be ashamed, but parents who condoned this sort of behavior should be ten times as ashamed. (In my time as academic director of Spelling Bee of China, I once eliminated a nationally-ranked speller who was well on his way to the finals, but who was carrying—and reading—a study guide very conspicuously while on stage. It was an awful scene, with plenty of screaming and anguish from all around. But cheating has no place in competitions of this sort, and I am proud that I held my ground.)

Maybe it's because I'm an old geezer. The intensity of the bee ceased its appeal for me years ago too. And the top bees themselves are unnecessarily using words that are overly arcane. A year ago, I wrote about this, then shelved it. But let's bring it out to air.

"What really disappoints me is what word lists have become. I don't watch bees much nowadays, but I see what the word lists entail. And word lists that comprise obscure genus names, archaic or obsolete words, Scottish words (not just words of Scottish origin, but full-on Scottish words), and random minerals to me are a slap in the face of spellers. Such word lists are cowardly. They say, 'We don't have the wherewithal to eliminate spellers using good words. So, we have to resort to this sort of blackguardly behavior.'"

What is clear to me now is that this is the norm. And my view on what a good bee word list should consist of is not. Combine that with my long-waning enthusiasm for bees, and it's clear that bees are not for me anymore. I'm just sad to see what the scene has now become.

In 1989, after I won then–Scripps-Howard, I was fortunate enough to chat from time to time with another past winner, Molly Dieveney. Despite her presence as a bee staff member, her biggest piece of advice to me was simply to get away from the bee...move on and don't look back. It obviously didn't stick, but after decades of involvement with the bee in one form or another, I think I'm ready to say "enough." I'm done. I wish bee culture the best going forward...without me. And judging by the direction it's been heading, I say it's just as well.