Spelling Bee: Can you spell ‘ affenpinscher’?

A-f-f-e-n-p-i-n-s-c-h-e-r.

Aside from being a small dog with a stiff red coat, pointed ears and a mustache, affenpinscher is one of many words that may be spelled during Utah State University’s “Spelling Bee My Valentine” Friday.

An estimated 80 students will participate in the competition in hopes of becoming USU’s champion speller for the year 2006.

“It’s a lot of fun, even if you’re a bad speller. It’s really interesting to come watch,” said Al Lambert, spelling bee coordinator. “It can be intense, especially when it gets down to the final two people.”

A panel of four Latin and Greek teachers from the classics program will be delivering the words to the spellers, including Susan Shapiro, Frances Titchener, Mark Damen and Ronna Jensen.

“It’s kind of an intellectual form of competition,” Damen said. “I think spelling defines a person with a sense of precision.”

The competition will be single-elimination and standard spelling bee rules will apply. There will be three rounds with everyone competing in the first round, about 16 people in the second round and anywhere from eight to 10 people in the final round, said Spencer Watts, ASUSU Academic Senate president, who is sponsoring the event.

“There aren’t a whole lot of academic competitions to get involved in on campus, so this is good that we’re having this,” Watts said.

Damen said the list of words from the competition were taken from a “secret source.”

“The English language has 360,000 words in general use and I’ll be using all of them,” he said jokingly.

This year’s spelling bee will have a holiday twist to coincide with Valentine’s Day on Tuesday.

“We might have a surprise selection of words that are related to the immediate holiday approaching us,” Damen said.

The winner of the competition will receive a computer donated by Computer Solutions and the second place winner will receive an iPod. In addition, various other prizes, such as gift certificates, will be given out to the runners up, Watts said.

The competition will be held in the Taggart Student Center Sunburst Lounge at 12:30 p.m. Students interested in competing can register for free at the ASUSU Help Desk on the first floor of the TSC or before the competition in the Sunburst Lounge.

-mmackay@cc.usu.edu