It's Spelling Bee Time

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on May 28, 2009 2:00PM

Yeah, we're total nerds. And also compulsive gamblers. Either of which is a perfectly good reason to check out the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee. Last year, River Forest's Rose Sloan had a run at the title, getting all the way to the prime-time finals before misspelling "sheitel," a word even our Firefox spellcheck doesn't recognize. This morning, the semifinals get under way (actually, right now on ESPN) and there are only two Illinois kids still in the running, neither from the greater Chicagoland area: Peoria's Kyle Mou and Springfield's Aishwarya Pastapur. Whoever comes out the nation's top speller, we're all winners, be it Jack Black or this kid.