Thousands of you took a shot at seven tricky spelling bee words. Most of you failed.
The test was part of “What Makes The Spelling Bee So Hard,” an article that we published this week exploring why some words at the Scripps National Spelling Bee stump contestants. This year’s competition concludes tonight.
| SHARE OF RESPONSES WITH … | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| WORD | AN INCORRECT GUESS | THE RIGHT ANSWER | NO ATTEMPT AT SPELLING |
| collyrium | 87.8% | 0.7% | 11.5% |
| hechsher | 85.2 | 3.0 | 11.8 |
| pejerrey | 84.5 | 0.6 | 14.9 |
| opificer | 80.6 | 1.1 | 18.4 |
| triskaidekaphobia | 79.5 | 8.1 | 12.4 |
| beurre | 69.7 | 19.9 | 10.4 |
| analemma | 59.0 | 28.3 | 12.7 |
Here’s how the test worked: For each of the words, we gave you the definition, the language of origin and an audio recording of the word being pronounced. You could either guess the spelling or give up and go straight to the answer. Like the spellers in the actual bee, when readers submitted a wrong answer, they heard a “ding!”
Ninety percent of all the guesses39 were wrong — the quiz was hard by design, highlighting potential spelling pitfalls using words from past national bees. But some of the words we tested proved more challenging than others. The share of responses that were right answers ranged from 28.3 percent for analemma to just 0.6 percent for pejerrey.
The second-most-misspelled word in our quiz, hechsher, comes from Hebrew. Almost 10 percent of incorrect guesses for hechsher were “kosher.” Perhaps readers leaned on the definition we supplied (“a rabbinical endorsement of food products”) or didn’t listen to the audio prompt?
| WORD | GUESS | SHARE OF INCORRECT GUESSES | |
|---|---|---|---|
| triskaidekaphobia | trischidecaphobia | 9.4% | |
| triskaidecaphobia | 4.9 | ||
| triskidecaphobia | 4.9 | ||
| hechsher | hekshur | 10.4 | |
| heksher | 10.4 | ||
| kosher | 9.6 | ||
| opificer | epiphiser | 6.4 | |
| apiphiser | 4.1 | ||
| epiphicer | 3.1 | ||
| analemma | analema | 23.1 | |
| anallema | 12.1 | ||
| annalema | 8.8 | ||
| collyrium | cholerium | 27.0 | |
| chalerium | 13.0 | ||
| cholereum | 5.6 | ||
| beurre | burr | 20.5 | |
| burre | 14.1 | ||
| buerre | 10.4 | ||
| pejerrey | payaray | 6.5 | |
| payray | 3.2 | ||
| paerae | 2.6 | ||
Analemma, the quiz word in our “double letters can mean trouble” section, was the easiest for readers. The challenge: figuring out which consonants appear twice. Thirty-two percent of guesses were correct, with only the “m” doubled. Among incorrect guesses, 16 percent included the double “m” but had a mistake elsewhere, while 20 percent and 15 percent had a double “n” or double “l” — as in balloon — respectively. The most common misspelling, “analema,” contained no double letters at all!
Readers missed the most on collyrium, which means eyewash. The corresponding section of the article warned readers to beware the “ch” that’s actually a hard k, as in cholera. Some readers seemed to take the bait: “Cholerium” accounted for 27 percent of incorrect guesses, our most common misspelling across the whole quiz.
While most readers tendered reasonably close guesses for the quiz words, there were some great half-court shots. I’m talking about “ghekzur” for hechsher, “pfizer” for opificer, or the four people who proffered “purr” for beurre. And then there was the reader who made it to the final word, pejerrey, and submitted “payasdfaasdfasdf.” We feel you, but …
Ding!
VIDEO: What to watch for in Thursday’s Spelling Bee final
