A French sauce called r«emoulade gave a father-son team a taste of the championship at a marathon edition

of the 16th Annual Adult Spelling Bee on Saturday in Santa Maria.

The words in rounds 20 and 21 brought down four teams, leaving the duo of Edda Bevilacqua and Daniel Slutske to vie for the top honors against previous spelling bee champions Dave Riddle and his son Christoph Riddle, 19.

Ultimately, the

No. 1 team signs, which coincidentally were worn by the Riddles, proved fitting. The pair won first place after correctly spelling “patzer,” which was spelled incorrectly by Bevilacqua and Slutske, and going on to correctly spell “r«emoulade,” a French sauce.

For this year’s spelling bee, the 300 words in the pronouncer guide proved to be no match for the skills of many participants. When the marathon spelling bee reached round 20, six of the 30 two-person teams still remained in the competition with only seven words unused in the list.

Organizers were prepared, however, with a list of especially difficult words selected from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to use if they ran through all 300 words in the pronouncer guide. The extra words from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary finally caused a number of steadfast pairs to stumble in their spelling prowess.

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Champion team member Dave Riddle said he has won the spelling bee four times, most recently in 2006, when

he and Christoph Riddle were a team. The Riddles did not

enter the 2007 contest. Dave Riddle said he has entered the bee at least five times.

The Riddle family travels from their Pacific Grove home to compete in spelling bees, Dave Riddle said. He is a national spelling bee champion.

“People were fierce in the competition,” Dave Riddle said, adding that participants studied hard.

Among the spellers were a number of people familiar with studying hard — honors English students from St. Joseph High School.

The spelling bee, held at the Souza Student Support Center in Santa Maria, raises funds for the Central Coast Literacy Council. The event is co-sponsored by the Central Coast Literacy Council and the Santa Maria Times.

Denize Cain, an English professor at Hancock College, served as the judge for the event. Pronouncers were Elliott Stern, sports editor from the Santa Maria Times, and Mark van de Kamp, management analyst for the City of Santa Maria.

Harry Landis from the Central Coast Literacy Council coordinated the spelling bee for the 12th year and what he said would be his last time overseeing the event.

“I decided 90 was enough,” said Landis, citing the passage of his 90th birthday.

“I sure am going to miss it,” he added.

Landis said the four-hour spelling bee was the longest the event has taken to finish.

Saturday’s bee was the second time pronouncers ran out of words and had to move on to an extra supply, Landis said.

Some teams misspelled words in the first few rounds Saturday, before a series of rounds went by with no teams eliminated. Audience members remarked that the words seemed to be getting easier.

Monya Davison was eliminated in the early rounds along with her teammate Juanita Delgado after Davison incorrectly spelled “muumuu.”

She spelled “M-U-U-M-U” then stopped,before the bell started to ring to indicate an incorrect spelling and she quickly added another “U,” having realized her mistake too late.

Davison said outside that she was thinking how mad her mom, who lives in Hawaii, would be at her misspelling a word for a dress worn in that state.

She said she realized she was wrong in her spelling “because I watched her go to lift the bell,” she said of Cain.

The word “lorgnette” in the 15th round eliminated last year’s champion, Mike Tolbert, who was on a team with Mark Jackson. Last year he was paired with Mike Gibson.

Jackson said that it was hard to hear the pronouncer saying the word.

Still, “we had no idea,” Tolbert said of the word.

Samantha Yale can be reached at: 739-2159 or syale@santamariatimes.com.

September 7, 2008