Spelling bee

[magid]

Actually, more like a spelling test. Yesterday afternoon, I went to try my spelling fu with 18 others, to see who'd get to be on the spelling team our company is sending to a fundraiser for adult literacy next month.

I did ok, a bit above average (mean, median, and mode :-). There were 26 words, each starting with a different letter.

What were the words? They're listed below, arranged from most often spelled correctly to least. And no, I didn't get the last one. I can spell it properly in Hebrew, though.

url
lovey-dovey
hibachi
claque
muntin
xyloid
novercal
inveigle
pterodactyl
scherzando
quisling
whisht
gutta-percha
blancmange
voussoir
exophthalmic
onomatopoeia
joual
ailurophile
dyspnea
yapok
kylikes
ferule
thalweg
zizith

Comments

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Hey! You made that word up! *points at any of half a dozen*

Good heavens. I mean, I know pterodactyl, but I've never even heard of about half those.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I didn't make them up; I'd never heard of lots of these!
I couldn't even figure out which letter to start ailurophile with until the rest of the words had been read and I could knock out the i, the e, and the y.

I was surprised more people didn't get blancmange, actually. We were making jokes about the Monty Python sketch with the tennis-playing blancmange.