In grammar school, I entered the Spelling Bee every year. I always lost to Marvin Bernstein. He was the Jordan/LeBron keeping me from the title. I never scored the winning shot. Apparently, if I tried again today, young Indian-Americans would block my way. The 2015 Winners are Vanya Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam. Maybe it was having to learn to spell their own names that inspired their interest. I've heard also that competing is a family thing.
For everyday spelling, computers have made champions of us all. Spell Check will handle it immediately. There are even programs that make sure we get the grammar right.
I'm not surprised about the spelling help. With calculators everywhere, it's been years since I went through the mental exercise of remembering the multiplication tables. I mean I'd be glad if I could recall them, but that would be some "senior" thing.
Aside from participants in the Spelling Bee, maybe it will be up to scrabble players to keep alive a keen interest in seldom used words and how to spell them.
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