Jiving with the Hive

COEUR d'ALENE — After powering through the word "schottische" and being stumped by the word "triskaidekaphobia," team "Hive Mind" celebrated a coin toss victory at the Kootenai County Adult Spelling Bee.

"I’ve never been so pumped,” said Hive Mind team member Michael Harryman, who was responsible for spelling words into the mic for his team. "I haven’t been this excited since a college football game."

"He’s been excited for a month prior to this, waiting for it," teammate Danajo Cole said with a smile.

Ten teams of spellers 18 and older competed in Thursday’s bee, which took place in the Coeur d’Alene Room of the North Idaho College Edminster Student Union Building. The cleverly named teams included the "Nerdy Wordsters" from the City of Post Falls, second-place team "Eleemosynary" (meaning "charitable") of North Idaho Eye Institute, "The Killer Bees" from the North Idaho Retired Educators Association and NIC’s "Bee-Dazzled" team, whose members livened up the party by wearing beekeeping hats with mesh veils.

Hive Mind’s members were Harryman, Cole and Calvin Saul of AGC AeroComposites in Hayden. It was their third year competing in the Adult Spelling Bee, which is in its fifth year. They received bee trophies and several congratulations for their stellar spelling.

"Third time's the charm," Harryman said.

Hive Mind had some stiff competition, including the tenacious Eleemosynary team. Eleemosynary went out on "maquillage," but not without quite the contest and a fate-sealing coin that landed in their adversary's favor.

"There’s words that don’t follow rules, those are the trickiest," Saul said. "You either know them or you don’t. Without the definition of some of those words, we never would have gotten them.”

Teams only had 30 seconds to confer among themselves before they had to write the spelling word on a projector. Several people who weren’t in the bee sat near the participants’ tables and followed along, spelling the words on notepads when they were announced.

The words became increasingly tough. The bee began with words such as "succinct," "conscientious" and "tincture" and progressed to the more difficult words like "dockwalloper," "insouciance," "rhabdomancy" and "obstreperous."

"Fasten your seatbelts,” emcee and pronouncer Lisa Nunlist said as the judges flipped to the harder word lists.

Nunlist entertained attendees with language-related anecdotes, information and humor when teams transitioned to the podium.

"The English language has more words than any other language," she said, referring to the melting pot of cultures that contributed to present day English — British, Italian, German, Latin and many more.

"Aren't we lucky to have the richest language in the world? We also have so many words for the same thing. What do you call that big piece of furniture in your living room — a couch? A sofa?" she asked, adding "divan" and "davenport" are also words for "couch."

The Kootenai County Adult Spelling Bee was presented by the Coeur d'Alene branch of the American Association of University Women as a way to raise funds for NIC and University of Idaho-Coeur d'Alene scholarships. This year's bee lasted 13 rounds, and teams that misspelled had the option to buy their way back in for $20 the first three rounds, $35 rounds four through six and for $50 beyond round six. Teams could only buy back in once.

AAUW members estimate this year's bee, which had a $100-per-team buy-in, netted nearly $2,700. All proceeds went to the scholarship programs.

"There are some of us who were spelling nerds in grade school. We looked forward to the Friday spelling tests," said Maxine Sullivan, AAUW communications officer. "As adults, we don't get as many opportunities to show off that we can spell."