The teams huddled to finalize the correct spelling of words in the Homewood Public Library’s Spell Check event on Saturday, Oct. 1. The Queen Bees team eventually prevailed at the fundraising event.
Starzynski, Tracie Moxley and Sonnie Birch, hold
the trophies they received for winning the first
Spell Check adult spelling bee at the Homewood
Public Library. (Photos by Eric Crump/H-F Chronicle)
Quick! The timer is ticking off the seconds!
The teams huddled to finalize the correct spelling of words in the Homewood Public Library’s Spell Check event on Saturday, Oct. 1.
Oldaker Ladies team to
the front of the room with a
poster displaying some of
the various ways people
misspell their name.
You typically can recognize words on a page, and you can probably spell correctly if you write a word down. But how would you do coming up to a microphone to spell off the top of your head?
Spell Check proved a challenge to some teams. Opening words, such as “address” or “balloon,” proved to be easy, but as the evening went on and words got more difficult, the audience of about 50 people waited in anticipation for the answers.
Host Nick Quirke, assisted by co-host Amy Eagle, kept the audience in the game with his many quips and encouraged rounds of applause as team after team was eliminated. The object of the evening was to have fun, so everyone laughed along.
The Oldaker Ladies, mom Elissa and daughters Beth, Lia and Yvonne, were on a roll, spelling words such as “bivouac” correctly but missing the second “I” in “liaison.” That knocked them out.
The Hart School team of teachers Maureen Daley, Ellen Noonan, Jacob Condon and Amy Liedtke had a problem with “guillotine.”
The Hypnotize Pies team of Paige and Jim Dague, Jeff Purvis and Christopher Craddock got “chrysanthemum” and “precocious” right to advance to the final round against Queen Bees Mary Kay Starzynski, Tracie Moxley and Sonnie Birch.
The two teams battled it out with words “dichotomy,” “ancillary,” “catastrophe” and “implacable.”
In the end, Queen Bees went home with the trophy. Hypnotize Pies came in second, and third place honors went to Hart School’s team.
Money raised through the event, and a raffle for tickets to the musical “Hamilton,” will support the library’s purchase of the latest 3-D laser cutter/engraver. The Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle was a proud sponsor of Spell Check.
Library Director Amy Crump said she anticipates a Spell Check event in 2017. That leaves spellers plenty of time to study the dictionary.