"Think Before You Spell"

Twice before, lanky Bill Cashore, 14, of little (pop. 500) Center Square, Pa., had entered the national spelling bee sponsored by the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Twice he had been knocked out at the district level. This year, when Bill decided to try again, under the auspices of the Norristown Times-Herald, he knew the odds against him only too well: each spring some 5,000,000 school kids enter the contest from all over the U.S.

A straight-A student at St. Helena's parochial high school. Bill went into training about a month ago. Though he hated to take time off from his stamp collecting and reading ("everything from match covers to encyclopedias," says his mother), he kept at his workouts. He pored over lists prepared by his teachers. At night, as he ate his bedtime snack, his mother would fire words at him while he struggled sleepily to spell them. The long preparation eventually paid off: last week Bill landed in Washington, D.C. for the finals.

In the Commerce Department auditorium, he and 56 others gathered for the big event. The first round proved so easy that not a single word was muffed. Then, gradually, the words began to get tougher.

Bill got bagatelle, but someone spelled cephalic with an "s" someone else tacked an "ay"; to the end of hyperbole, and a third decided that souffle should conclude with "t." By lunchtime only 34 contestants were left.

As the afternoon wore on, Bill felt himself grow groggy, and the bright lights began to "make me feel a little sick." Nevertheless, he stood his ground through leprechaun and ichthyology, while the others fell around him one by one. Ensilage (with a "c") claimed one young victim, etymology (with an "i") another, and homiletic (with a second "o") still another.

Bill had no trouble with heterogeneous, and though he had no idea what it meant he managed to get through accrete. Other contestants were not so lucky: mellifluous lost an "1," fenestrate got a "phi," and molybdenum came out moldinum. By the time Bill was getting apocalypse, Pharisaical and littoral, the auditorium was already ringing with misspelled words (baubal, glatial, pavillion, urbain, annoble). Finally, the contest was narrowed down to three.

After Patricia Brown, 14, of Alabama, turned miscible into missible, William Kelley, 11, of Missouri, was confronted with uncinated. "U -n--" said young Kelley manfully, "s ..." Bill Cashore fell into no such trap: uncinated came out with a "c," and transept, the clincher, with an "s." Last week, with a $500 scholarship in his pocket and a weekend scheduled in Manhattan, Champion Cashore admitted that he had "guessed a little" during the ordeal. But that did not prevent him from offering a word of advice to contestants of the future. "Study hard after school," said Bill. "And think before you spell."

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