Spell-E-Bration

"Demurrage" was the winning word for The Wanna-Bees at Sound Learning's 28th annual Spell-E-Bration fundraising spelling bee June 29 at the Mason County Senior Activities Association center in Shelton.

Demurrage is a charge payable to the owner of a chartered ship in respect of failure to loan or discharge the ship within the time agrees. This was a victory for the team of spellers Pearl Ostroff Deloach, Susan Carlson and Nancy Evans. The trio correctly spelled curio first to end a long faceoff with the second-place team, WORDLE (West Olympia Rotary Dictating Letter Experts) of Lisa Woodard, Pam Farr and Dirk Havlak.

The money raised will be used by the 33-year-old nonprofit to offer adult basic education classes, high school plus classes to help adults earn a high school diploma, GED preparation, English for speakers of other languages, and citizenship. Sound Learning has helped more than 6,000 students.

Nine teams of spellers competed at the event, staged for the first time at the senior center after years at the Shelton Civics Center. Some of the teams dressed in costume, attendees bid on auction items, and patrons enjoyed a couple tables of food and live music by The Backlash Band.

The judges were Shelton Police Chief Chris Kostad, Maria Parra and Patti Case, Curt Bennett pronounced the words and Joan Bennett was the scorekeeper.

All nine teams correctly spelled their words during the first round. Two teams were knocked out in the second round, but a "bribe" to the judges, in the form of a donation to Sound Learning, put them back in the game.

By the end of the fifth round, the contest was down to The Wanna-Bees and WORDLE. A team has to spell two words in a row correctly to win. Among the words spelled correctly: teraunograph, fatalit, patois, flagitious and malapropos.