Spell-a-pointment: Chicago-Area Girl Misses Out On Bee Title

By Marcus Gilmer in Arts & Entertainment on May 31, 2008 5:08AM

The 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee is in the books (see what we did there?) and your Champion is not the adorable Rose Sloan.

Despite an amazing effort, reaching the 11th round, Sloan misspelled "sheitel," dropping the 'i' and ending her fantastic run. Still, congrats are in order to Rose and all the Chicago-area contestants for an outstanding showing. We're proud. Keep up the diligent spelling work an one day, you could be correcting us on this very site. Don't feel too bad for the kids that didn't quite make it, though: they got to be interviewed by ESPN's Erin Andrews (swoon!). In the end, the title went to Sameer Mishra of Lafeyette, Indiana, with the winning word "guerdon," which means "reward" (ah, you clever judges). So the champ is still from our region, which is reason enough to celebrate we guess.

Photo of Rose's D'oh! moment taken from the Scripps National Spelling Bee website