What Word Did You Miss?

I was just wondering what words everyone missed in the Bee and what lessons they learned from them. (Not necessarily miss and out, even in the preliminaries or written test.) It doesn't have to be just this year.

Last year, at the district bee I missed "dulcet" because it was French so I spelled it "dolcette" because it sounded more French. I placed 9th. The lesson I learned was that -ette is usually a suffix for nouns only. (I didn't read Spell it carefully enough)

This year I missed "syndicate" (the noun, not that it would help if it was the verb's pronunciation.) at the State bee. (My current profile pic) I spelled it "sindicate" because the y seemed too Greek for a Latin word. Now the word pops up a lot AFTER the bee. (some song on iheartradio and places I can't remember right now) I placed 4th. MANY lessons learned: Don't just pass over a word thinking you'll remember it and take time to study it, don't study at the last minute, a word doesn't have to be Greek to have a y in the middle (most obvious one,) spelling words appear in life and not just on spelling lists, and most importantly, trust your instinct. (if I did I would have gotten it right.)

Oh the irony! Both years at the bee I lost, Speller #2 won and I missed a word that started and ended with the same letters as the word for the level of the bee I lost at. Dulcet= district and Syndicate= state. So that means if I make it to the nationals I will have to be careful about speller #2 and n-words that end in l. I better start studying the "N" section in the dictionary. Not to mention that this year's district bee was on my birthday and I go my lucky number 16. Well, it's just superstition.

This is crazy. Two years ago, I missed three words and just spelled "lyric" correctly (at the rules said we have to spell 4 words, and there will be a tie-breaker if there are more-than-three highest scorers), and I remember well I missed Buddhism. The Bee turned biennially and I'll be revenging my 2010 loss and made a "little" protest *ah, advise* to the organizers because the rules aren't relevant for some others who wants to learn new words and audiences who speak broken English alias don't speak English well. And I didn't notified about the homonyms and things...

I completely forgot about my missing words from 2006-2009 (regionals), especially the 2006-2008 one because it was quick-fire challenge on semifinals and Grand Finals *obviously, that quick-fire challenge can also made a speller didn't have chance to spell if the other speller(s) were super fast, quick, and correct*.

I just hope this year I can take my revenge.

I missed 'nobiliary'. I never heard that crucial second 'i'. It was my first bee. In future, I'll remember to repeat words back to the judges multiple times!

Well, the first word I ever misspelled in competition was "ingenious". Luckily it was just my practice round word. However, as soon as I heard the word I distinctly remembered my dad quizzing me on it a few weeks earlier. I remembered that I had spelled it "ingenius", but since I didn't remember the correct spelling I just went ahead and spelled it the way that I knew was wrong. I have since learned that you should never give up, and that you should never start spelling a word unless you are absolutely positive that your spelling is correct. In 2010, two words that I missed on the Round 1 test were "cynophilist" and "isocryme". I missed cynophilist because I couldn't remember what letter the word for dog began with, and I missed isoryme because I couldn't remember that crym meant cold. From that, I learned to pay attention to the spellings of roots as well as the definition, and to focus a bit more on root words.

I missed minacious in regionals last year.