Comparative literature student Frank Cahill competed in the Scripps National Spelling Bee as an eighth grader. This year, on May 28 and 29, he’ll be on the other side of the stage.
UC Berkeley Ph.D. student Frank Cahill worked with a team to build this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee word list. He says creating a fair list has been a priority and a great challenge. "We want to run a fair competition, where everything feels equitable to the spellers, because they put so much time and care into it."
Courtesy of Scripps National Spelling Bee
There’s a word UC Berkeley comparative literature Ph.D. student Frank Cahill will never forget. He misspelled it as an eighth grader in the second round of the live televised Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.
Porwigle. Yes, you read that correctly. The word was p-o-r-w-i-g-l-e, pronounced por·wi·gle.
He’d prepared for that moment in 2012 for years, competing in spelling bees across the country as a student at Ave Maria Catholic School in Parker, Colorado. He knew Japanese words, Greek words, German words. But this alteration of the Middle English term for tadpole stumped him. As most of us would, he added an extra g. (Moments before this fateful flub, he had successfully spelled “dedans,” an obscure French word for the spectators at a court-tennis match.)
“I was totally devastated,” he said.
After he missed it, he stayed composed — he was on live television at the world’s top spelling bee, after all — and sat down. When he got back to his seat, though, the waterworks started. “Just nonstop tears for days,” he said. “It was a good first lesson that, yes, hard work pays off, but some things don’t go your way, and you better learn how to manage that.”
More than a decade later, Cahill is a word panelist for the 100th Scripps National Spelling Bee. The annual competition in Washington, D.C., will include 243 youth from all 50 U.S. states and several U.S. territories, plus five countries outside of the U.S., and will be televised live on May 28 and 29.
Enchanted by words
Cahill’s mom loves to remind him that he was slow to start reading. But when he finally caught on, he was hooked.
Words enchanted him. He became fascinated with their meanings, where they came from and how they sounded. “Weissnichtwo,” a German word meaning an indefinite, unknown or imaginary place, was one of hundreds he relished. “Eisteddfod,” a competitive arts festival in Wales, and “pogonotomy,” a word of Greek origin for the cutting or shaving of a beard, were also among his favorites.
“It’s like having contact with a new culture, a new kind of world,” he said. “It’s just so intoxicating.”