It’s no Spelling Bee, it’s Meaning Bee

If there is one place where the Indian American is on a surer footing than in Silicon Valley, then it is the Spelling Bee. They score spectacularly at this verbal calisthenics, leaping off a letter, rippling a ribbon over another, making a short hop on a third, a twisting, triple somersault over the next three and then landing elegantly on the last — the word is spelt right to the T. Indian American children have won 10 times in the last 14 years. But now competitors face an operose task: it is not enough that they know how to spell a tongue-twister, they should also know its meaning. The rule is changed just six weeks before the competition. This is Spelling Bee, not Meaning Bee, goes the outcry. Some Indian Americans say this is a trick to land them in guetapens — the winning word of last year, meaning “traps”; was there, indeed, a hint there? — and squelch their supremacy.

The timing is, indeed, vexatious. But then, what is a word without its meaning? And every Bee champ good enough to know the root of a word better know its denotation. However, soon, in a world working on MS Word where misspelling comes with a red worm, and a dictionary is just a tab away, Spelling Bee will be a beautifully antediluvian exercise, something like those monks embellishing manuscripts in their scriptorium long after the press started printing.