Got a Bee In Your Bonnet?

The Claremont Sunrise Rotary Club's "Phun Club" was the winner of the Fourth Annual Friends of the Claremont Library Spelling Bee. They reclaimed the title that they last won in 2007 and lost to the House of Ruth team in 2008.

The Phun Club won the grueling third round by correctly spelling "rubefacient." They faced strong competition, however, from the likes of the Jane Austen Book Club (don't let their bluestocking name fool you! Real Janeites are tough competitors!), the Ruthless Spellbinders (from the House of Ruth), and the widows'-weeds-bedecked trio, the Tombstone Terminators (Friends of Oak Park Cemetery).

The Claremont Courier also had a team this year...which is interesting, as the Courier has had an ongoing run of mispelled words in its issues.

The El Roble cheer squad performed "YMCA" for the crowd and "The Flight of the Bumblebee" accompanied the spellers as they took their seats (which were decorated with bee-shaped containers of honey).

A great time was had by all, and the emcees entertained the crowd with many a pun and poked fun at several city staples, such as the infamous Claremont trolley (how do you spell "bus"?).


Think you have what it takes to spell in the bee next year? Here are some of the words from today's bee:

stridulated (which, when read to the competitors, really sounded like "strigulated")
palladium
plenilune
speleology (this one elicited a collective gasp from the audience when it came up!)
lackadaisical
cinematheque
teratology
habiliments
brunneous
ormolu
gammelost
ghurry (don't feel so bad about missing this one...read here about a speller in Hawaii that struggled with it in 2005)
seicento
sederunt
rapprochement
Pentateuchal