July 8, 2021

The National Spelling Bee Finals, Canceled by COVID Last Year, Are Tonight. Take Our Very Serious Quiz.

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Last year was the first time since World War II that the national spelling bee was canceled. The bee is back. Finals are tonight at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.

I’m no fan of the bee. You can have it. Why would I want to watch you fumble “pococurante” in front of millions of eyes as beads of terrified sweat light up your crunched forehead like an athlete grunting against the weight of a defender? Still, I’m a Professional Haver of Interest in spelling and grammar and language and accuracy and education, the whole mess of obsessive word-squinting. All for the idea. But if I’ve learned one thing from this spelling racket, it’s the right to informed dissent: The bee is a sugar high.

I’ve read the arguments for and against, and I’m not swatting or punching “down” at your intrepid bee—bee health matters—but if you catch me in the elevator at an annual copy-edit conference (real event) and ask me to spell “succedaneum” or “guetapens” or “autochthonous,” I’ll inch away and take a “phone call.”

“Succedaneum” and “guetapens” and “autochthonous” are winning words from spelling bees of years past. Take a look at the winners from every contest since 1925. Knock yourself out.

Before you send us pointed rebuttals to recharge@motherjones.com, prove your mettle/metal/meddle/medal by acing this quiz:

1. misspelled or mispelled

2. hydroxychloroquine or hydroxychloroquin

3. incumbant or incumbent

4. gerrimandering or gerrymandering

5. caronavirus, coronavirus, or coronovirus

6. predeliction, predilection, or prediliction

7. desperate or desparate

8. annually or anually

9. buoyant or bouyant

10. separate or seperate

11. concensus or consensus

12. embarrass or embarass

13. guage or gauge

14. miniscule or minuscule

15. occurrence or occurance

16. persue or pursue 

17. siege or seige

18. sieze or seize

19. vacuum or vaccuum

20. withhold or withold

Look at you—20 out of 20! Congratulations. You didn’t even buckle and search. Tune in tonight if you must. Before you go, a bonus for playing: Get in on Mother Jones’ latest newsletter, David Corn’s This Land, for our DC bureau chief’s sharp insights, scoops, recommendations, and behind-the-scenes accounts from Washington and beyond. I guarantee each newsletter is spelled perfectly—and perfectly spelled. Get on it.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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