Blond braids resting on her shoulders, Imogen L.B. Page asked every question she could think of about "cowardice" Wednesday morning during preliminaries in Washington.
Then she did the Bee equivalent of using a helpline.
"Is there anything else you can tell me?" the Lewiston, Maine, 14-year-old said in crisp, British-sounding tones to the pronouncer.
"It's a nice day," Jacques A. Bailly said.
He is a brainy 1980 Bee champ and associate professor of classics who has put his smarts to use seven years as pronouncer of words to perhaps equally brainy Bee contestants.
Imogen was unfazed by his reply, injecting her own dose of wit.
"Thank you. That helps," the two-year Bee contestant said. Then she aced the word.
The spelling contest is in its 82nd year, but you can teach an old Bee new tricks. The 293 spellers for 2009 are getting more star turns on stage before the microphone.
Organizers added another round of spelling to the preliminaries, Paige P. Kimble, Bee director, said.
Spellers' parents buzzed. Bee staff listened.
"Many parents let us know last summer that they felt like the achievement of making it to the national finals ought to be rewarded with a little more spelling time on stage," Kimble said.
The first round is a 50-word test each speller took at a computer keyboard Tuesday. Just 25 of the words count toward a score determining whether a speller advances to semifinals Thursday morning.
Rounds two and three Wednesday are oral spelling sessions on stage with no eliminations. About 6:20 p.m. Wednesday, Bee officials will announce no more than 50 semifinalists based on how spellers performed on the test and two oral spelling rounds.
The semifinals are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, and championship finals are 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday.
(All times Eastern Daylight Time.)
Wednesday was packed with adjectives: peculiar, sterile, tolerable, indebted, polysyllabic, winnable -- a missed word -- and transitory, for instance.
Cameron Shabahang, sporting a definite moustache, triumphed on transitory.
Spellers range in age from 14-year-olds like the moustache-bearing Grand Rapids, Mich., eighth-grader to 9-year-olds like Shevelle Six of Sanders, Ariz.
With lunch hours away and breakfast burning to fire neurons, a food word stirred up interest.
"Calzone" has various pronunciations and one delicious description.
"It's good for lunch," Bailley said after going into detail about the stuffed, baked creation for Jacqueline Smedley of California, Md.
The 12-year-old digested the information and spelled the word correctly.
E-mail Trish Choate at choatet(at)shns.com.
INFO BOX
What: Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Where: Live from Washington on ESPN360.com Web site, ESPN and ABC When: preliminaries on ESPN360.com at 1:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Wednesday; semifinals on ESPN 10 a.m. EST Thursday; championship finals on ABC 8 p.m. EST Friday.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
