ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300096
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
They raced through ``incienso'' (a desert shrub) and ``horripilation'' (goose bumps), but stumbled on ``brazen'' and ``berated'' as the 69th annual National Spelling Bee got under way with 247 nervous kids.
There was an audible sigh of relief in the hotel ballroom as 11-year-old Jimmy McCarthy of Land O'Lakes, Fla., the first profoundly deaf competitor in 69 years of the Bee, handled ``diplopia'' (double vision), ``dormition'' (death resembling falling asleep) and ``vernacularize'' (to express in local dialect) with ease.
When the day ended, after three rounds, 103 spellers remained.
Among those eliminated in the early rounds was 12-year-old Courtney Lynn Olson, a sixth-grader at Giles County's Macy McClaugherty School. Courtney represented The Roanoke Times. She missed ``catechism'' (a manual used for religious instruction) in the second round.
Most contestants took advantage of the ability to ask questions about the word they were to spell - parts of speech, definitions, alternate pronunciations and word origins - but Jimmy asked only for ``vernacularize'' to be repeated.
The competition ends today. The spellers get a head start by being allowed to study a list that includes all the words used in the first round, but then they are on their own.
The only five-time contestant in the history of the Bee, 13-year-old Amanda Burke of Gate City, Va., Middle School, missed ``monaural'' in the third round.
Under the strict rules, spellers may stop in the middle of a word and begin again, but they cannot change any letters.
The casualties came quickly.
First down was contestant No. 3, 11-year-old Wiley Bogren of Fairbanks, Alaska. He misspelled ``foraminate'' (perforated).
Two entrants later, 13-year-old Logan Owen of Heber, Ariz., spelled ``asymmetric'' (lack of symmetry) as ``assymmetric.''
``I knew the word,'' he said. ``I just said it too fast.''
LENGTH: Short : 46 linesby CNB