ingenies

Last night my firm participated and sponsored a Lawyers for Literacy event. It was a spelling bee to raise money to help kids learn how to read. Our firm had 3 summer associates on our team. I was speller 3. All the 1's for all the teams go, then the 2's, then the 3's.

During round 1.

Host: "lexical."
DK, our speller 1: "l-e-x-y-c-l-e."
Eliminated.

During round 2.

Host: "inoculate."
TS, our speller 2: "i-n-n-o-c-u-l-a-t-e."
Eliminated.

It's all down to me. I noticed the trend of easy words at the beginning of each round, so I sat second. The first girl went up and the word was "ingenious." She spelled it, "i-n-g-e-n-i-u-s." I was thinking, yup, that's correct. Wrong, she got eliminated. I was so puzzled because I couldn't think of any other way to spell it. It was my turn.

Host: "ingenious."
me: "Can I have the definition?"
Host: some random words because I wasn't paying attention.
me: "i-n-g-e-n-i....."
(long pause. I knew "u-s" was wrong because that's how the girl spelled it. But that's the only way I could think of to spell it.)
me: "e-s."
Eliminated.

Our whole team got eliminated in our first rounds. And we were the biggest sponsor of the event. Awesome.