Spelling Bee

What: Eighth annual Howard County Spelling Bee When: Friday, March 9; 7 p.m. free and open to the public Where: Reservoir High School, 11550 Scaggsville Road, Fulton Sponsor: Howard County Library System Competitors: 64 students (public, private, home-schooled) Available words: 500 in the official bee list (the bee has never gotten to this many words) Last year's winning word: deleterious

Tidewater Players, the community theater of Havre de Grace, will its spring Musical next month. Back by popular demand, the players present the hilarious musical comedy, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, May 4 through May 20. Showtimes at the Opera House, 121 N. Union Ave., are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. All tickets are $15. To make reservations, visit http://www.tidewaterplayers.com to purchase online seats or call 410-939-TIDE.

THERE were eight Marylanders (of 238 contestants) in the 67th national spelling bee in Washington recently. One of them, 12-year-old Kathryn Rougle, of Annapolis, made it to the seventh round before misspelling "intercalary." None of the Marylanders was from Baltimore.Not so in 1955. That May 19, just a year following the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision, a 12-year-old African-American girl from Baltimore stood in a pale yellow cotton dress in the auditorium of the Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

A Catonsville third-grader is on his way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee after winning the seventh annual Baltimore Spelling Bee on Saturday. Shaheer Imam, an 8-year-old who attends Al-Rahmah School, correctly spelled "fuselage" in the 17th round to snag the title. Forty-nine spellers from Baltimore City and Baltimore County competed in the bee, held at Towson University. Elizabeth Bernatowicz of Masters Academy won second place and Lance Pacis of the St. Clement Mary Hofbauer School took third.

Tidewater Players, the community theater of Havre de Grace, will its spring Musical next month. Back by popular demand, the players present the hilarious musical comedy, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, May 4 through May 20. Showtimes at the Opera House, 121 N. Union Ave., are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. All tickets are $15. To make reservations, visit http://www.tidewaterplayers.com to purchase online seats or call 410-939-TIDE.

CARROLL COUNTY's first spelling bee for charity will be held Tuesday night, and and Linwood resident Hank Johnson will be there with spelling teammates Barbara Walker (Runnymeade Elementary School's principal) and Robert Jarboe.Johnson says he and Jarboe, both now real estate agents, are "recycled academics." Johnson is a former director of the Maryland State Arts Council, and Jarboe was an English teacher at McDonough School in Baltimore County.Those who know Walker may have watched her win on the television quiz show "Jeopardy."

WASHINGTON -- When he heard the word "kamikaze," 14-year-old Geoff Hooper grinned. He knew he was about to become the nation's spelling champion.Geoff, an eighth-grader from Arlington, Tenn., beat 234 other youngsters yesterday in the 66th annual National Spelling Bee. The two-day competition, sponsored by Scripps Howard Newspapers, ran for 16 rounds and was so intense at times that some participants described it as if it were a war."Everybody's pretty much going for survival," said 12-year-old Taylor West of Altavista, Va., a four-year veteran of the bee who was eliminated in the sixth round.

The east Columbia library, 6600 Cradlerock Way, will present "Bee Season: One Champion's Perspective," with fifth-grader Priyanka Chavan, Howard County Spelling Bee champion and representative to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The program, to be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 21, includes an explanation of how schools can participate in the contests. Adults and families are invited. Registration begins Sept. 7. Information: 410-313-7700. Jazz Club at the library meets at 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays.

"Life is random and unfair," the cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee sings in a number called "Pandemonium." Live theater also proved pretty random Wednesday at the Hippodrome Theatre, where Spelling Bee launched the subscription season as well as the show's national tour. But this musical - which began as an improvised sketch and includes audience interaction - is better equipped to handle pandemonium than most. The first glitch came when the production's sound board crashed at the start of the performance.

WASHINGTON - The third try spelled success for George Thampy, who won the 73rd Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee yesterday. The 12-year-old from Maryland Heights, Mo., took the $10,000 grand prize in the 15th round by spelling "demarche," which means maneuver. After tying for fourth place in 1998 and tying for third last year, George returned to the finals this year intent on making it his last year in the competition. "I wanted to win," said the seventh-grader, who like the second-and third-place winners, is schooled at home.

What: Eighth annual Howard County Spelling Bee When: Friday, March 9; 7 p.m. free and open to the public Where: Reservoir High School, 11550 Scaggsville Road, Fulton Sponsor: Howard County Library System Competitors: 64 students (public, private, home-schooled) Available words: 500 in the official bee list (the bee has never gotten to this many words) Last year's winning word: deleterious

"Can you use it in a sentence?" "Um … what's the definition?" You can hear questions like that asked by participants of any given spelling bee. What you don't hear is people asking those questions - and meaning them seriously - in the midst of a theatrical production. And that's what makes "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" such a unique theatrical work. The musical comedy, which will be performed by the Columbia-based community troupe Silhouette Stages starting Oct. 28, lets four audience members per performance take part in an actual spelling bee as it tells the story of seven kids each trying to be a spelling champ.

Watson breaks through Teddy Greenstein Chicago Tribune I'm going out on a limb, picking a U.S. Open champion born in the same country as Barack Obama. American golfers have been trumped of late by internationals. Enough's enough. It's time for a country boy named Bubba to win a major. Bubba Watson can bomb it 350 yards and also hits the most greens on tour. The lefty closed well to win in San Diego and New Orleans this year and came within a shot of claiming his first major at last year's PGA Championship.

This year, the winning word was stromuhr, an instrument used to measure blood flow through an artery. Fifteen years ago, the correct spelling of xanthosis, which means a discoloration of degenerating tissues, brought home the prize. In 1956, it was a word most people are now familiar with — condominium. Students at Central Middle School in Edgewater are busy familiarizing themselves with such words because it is one of 32 schools in Anne Arundel County enrolled in next year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will be held in the spring in Washington, D.C. Central Middle sixth-grade language arts teacher Dan Scott, who is coordinating the school's efforts, said that the school is now conducting spelling bee training and programs in classrooms.

Sam Osheroff had only one goal heading into this year's Howard County Spelling Bee. The 11-year-old sixth-grader wanted to improve on his third-place finish in last year's competition. Sam started his preparation for the competition a couple of months ago. He studied hundreds of flash cards from spelling competition word guides - even studying poolside while vacationing with his family in the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. All the preparation and sacrifice paid off March 12 when the Clarksville Middle School student beat out 63 others from across the county and won the annual Howard County Spelling Bee. Sam, who won a $1,000 scholarship, a trophy and a copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, will now go on to compete in the National Spelling Bee in Washington from June 2-4. Siri Neerchal, a fifth-grade student at Centennial Lane Elementary School, was the second-place finalist.

Jack Nolan spent months trying to improve upon his finish at last year's Howard County spelling bee, when he was knocked out in the fourth round. The fifth-grader at Deep Run Elementary School in Elkridge studied 15 words a week that his mother, Valerie, found by scouring the Internet. He defined all of the words, wrote them backward and memorized them. The preparation paid off this year when the 10-year-old correctly spelled "fortuitous" in the 15th round to capture the county title.

Get out your dictionary for the Carroll County Literacy Council's "Sekon Anyule Spellin Be" at 7 p.m. Nov. 11 at Wilhelm's Ltd. Caterers in Westminster.Ten teams of three adult members each are practicing for those tough words in hopes of not being the first to be eliminated.Two groups of five teams each will compete against each other until two teams are left.The winning team gets one plaque for its sponsor and one for each member.Susan White-Bowden will return as master of ceremonies. Judges will be LeRoy Panek from Western Maryland College, Manchester Mayor Elmer Lippy, Sykesville Police Chief Wallace Mitchell, Carroll County Times Publisher Robin Saul and Carol Poole of the Literacy Council.

The National Spelling Bee is a terrific event that is chock full of drama and adolescent angst, but if the line between traditional sports and eclectic time fillers gets blurred much more, you might just see Stuart Scott interviewing me after the next power eating championship. I mean, let's get real. I understand that the cable networks need something to fill the three hours a night that aren't already committed to reruns of the 2004 World Series of Poker, but watching a 12-year-old's world come to an end because he failed to correctly spell the word eremacausis doesn't strike me as the pinnacle of sports entertainment.

Andrew Risinger, the eighth-grader who won this year's Howard County Library Spelling Bee, set his sights this week on a much bigger challenge. The 13-year-old student at Patapsco Middle School is taking preliminary tests in hopes of qualifying to be among the 100 quarterfinalists in the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington. Yesterday morning, Andrew and 287 other hopefuls took an online spelling test and today are scheduled to take an oral test where each spells one word.

When the announcer asked him to spell pompadour, all Andrew Risinger could do was visualize the outdated hairstyle he observed while watching an old Bob Hope movie in French class at Patapsco Middle School. A moment later, the eighth-grader was correctly spelling the word. Then came the applause. The 13-year-old from Ellicott City was the 2008 Howard County Library Spelling Bee champion. His family, seated in the second row of Howard High School's auditorium Friday night, leapt into the air with excitement.