Curly words test orthographic skill

Last year's representative Charlotte Roose. Picture / Amos Chapple

Gnarled, knuckle, nincompoop. Syrupy, sanctimonious, chauvinism.

Just a sampling of the words students need to know if they want to compete in the cut-throat world of competitive spelling.

The Plunket National Spelling Bee will be holding regional competitions in coming months, with finalists going on to the national final in Wellington on April 1. The national winner will represent New Zealand at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in the United States.

Last year 12-year-old Hamilton schoolgirl Charlotte Roose bowed out at the end of the second round after erythrophobia - the fear of blushing - proved one big word too many.

New Zealand competition judge John Ansell said composing the competition word list was a complex business. "It's a fine line between being too obtuse and too outrageously difficult."

Some of the American competitions had incredibly curly words but it was possible the televising of spelling bees in the US could influence the list makers, he said.

US children often also had a number of years' experience in spelling bees.

Mr Ansell said it was important words to be used in the New Zealand competition were ones children would likely encounter later in everyday life, "though [they were] not necessarily everyday ones for 13-year-olds".

Many of the words, despite being reasonably common, are not spelled the way one would think, and it is not a full word list, either.

Learning the word list would save embarrassment in early rounds of the competition, but students should be prepared for some stumpers later on, Mr Ansell said.

Aside from a trip to compete in Washington, DC, winning the New Zealand spelling bee could spell riches of a different sort.

Prizes include $3000 worth of electronic dictionaries for top spellers and the schools that support them.

Anyone interested in entering the Plunket National Spelling Bee can register online. Registrations close on March 10. 


Spelling bee

More than 300 words appear on this year's Plunket National Spelling Bee list. Competitors will have to learn words including:

* Mellifluous
* Rumbustious
* Zabaglione
* Haemorrhage
* Electroencephalograph
* Onomatopoeia
* Haemophilia
* Guacamole
* Whirligig
* Isosceles

To view the full list, visit the Plunket SpellingBee online.