Spelling Bees are interesting phenomena. There is an odd appeal of standing in front of strangers trying to see who has the best command of letters. This is different than other forms of language competition, as spelling bees don’t test linguistic flexibility like Scrabble, prod synapses like crosswords, or even delve into the mathematic-adjacent territory of Wordle.
From an outside perspective, it’s simply showing off to a bunch of strangers that you don’t need spell check to write an SAT essay. It’s impressive in its own right, but nothing that’s worth putting on a resume. Yet somehow in the moment, being on a podium and asked to spell an esoteric medical term feels like it does matter, and what transpires is a very intense echo chamber where the stakes become very high over something so inconsequential.
Spelling Bees don’t have a lot going on beyond the fact that they, um, go on. Hot Pepper Eating contests, of similar vein, are just masochists performing for sadists and at the end of the day everyone goes home with a tummy ache. There aren’t any jerseys for this type of event. They seem to exist for the act of existing and bragging rights in a vacuum.
Above these mundane exercises, competitive eating does have an edge in the echelon of “inane activities somehow warped into a ranking system”. I think anyone in the scene can appreciate Joey Chestnut’s impressive display of gluttony as a spectacle (in addition to being the champion of eating Nathan’s weenies, he holds a plethora of world records that didn’t exist until he made them: 141 hardboiled eggs in Kentucky on 2013, 55 glazed donuts in California in 2017, 54 brain tacos in Minnesota in 2013. The list goes on).
But what really put Mr. Chestnut on the map was introducing the radical mind-bending strategy of efficient hotdog consumption: you dip the bun in water and use it to help pad down the encased mystery meat like a trash compactor. How obvious in hindsight! How beautiful in theory!
Like a chess master devising a new opening gambit, Joey Chestnut invented something new in the competitive eating scene.
So where is the Joey Chestnut for spelling bees?
And more importantly, is there room in the spelling bee paradigm to allow people like Mr. Chestnut to push boundaries? Spellers are given options of definition, origin, and usage in a sentence to level the playing field between themselves and the dictionary, but there is no method that’s the equivalent of “huh, well I suppose that is a more efficient way to eat a hot dog”.
But then again, why does it matter? One could argue that the joy of eating the most of anything scratches the same itch as being able to outlast someone in spice, or bragging rights for the best speller. Perhaps the Spelling Bee circuit is doing just fine, and it doesn’t need naysayers like myself trying to reinvent the wheel. The act is itself rewarding enough.
When I was younger my father once told me to make my bed and I said, “Why make your bed if it’s only going to get messy again?”
And he answered, “Why eat if you’re only going to get hungry again?”
Maybe that’s the message. I don’t know. I’ll go eat my feelings with something spicy and then practice spelling all the multi-syllable ingredients at the back of the box.