Which spelling bee contestant was knocked out by the word “palatschinken”?
TERRE HAUTE — Palatschinken, the name of a central European pancake, was not tasty for Terre Haute’s Kennyi Aouad as he missed its spelling, finishing sixth in the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship Thursday night in Washington, D.C. Obviously disappointed, the effervescent Otter Creek Middle School student did manage to make a characteristic funny face as he heard the correct spelling. “It’s all right,” he said, after learning he was out of the contest, adding that he had “tried my best.” Aouad easily spelled his first word, the adverb “scilicet,” as he smiled at the camera. “He had his game face on,” a television announcer said during the early round of the ABC network live broadcast. A video that was aired before Aouad spelled his first word gave some insight into the Otter Creek student, showing him running in a park near his Terre Haute home. “I am fast — well, decent fast,” he quipped. He said “jovial” best describes him. His family is from Ghana and said his name, K
We love the Scripps National Spelling Bee because they always use obscure and hard-to-spell food words, and the finals, which were nationally televised, didn’t disappoint. Thirteen-year old Kavya Shivashankar, who won the whole thing, is herself a budding gastronome — in her bio segment she said, “I think the word that best describes me would be lickerish — lickerish means ‘fond of good food.'” (See the video after the jump.) Early rounds had mousseline, trattoria, Tetrazzini, Grenache, galette, sommelier, witloof, and three types of pasta (tagliatelle, fedelini, and perciatelli). There was even an attempt to inject some humor into the normally dull and tense proceedings — organizers turned the sentences read by Jacques Bailly, the official pronouncer, into jokes. Here are some of the food words from the later rounds: Geusioleptic: “having or characterized by pleasant flavor” In a sentence: “While Lena’s geusioleptic cooking wowed her boyfriend, what really melted his heart was that sh
