1 competitor, 1 spelling bee _ 20,000 note cards

Joseph White:

One of the favorites to win this year's National Spelling Bee lay face down on his living room floor wearing a black shirt, blue jeans and white socks, his torso supported by a couple of big pillows. His hands seemed to be on nonstop autopilot as they folded colorful paper into origami shapes.

Across the room in a big chair sat his younger brother. Between them were stacks and stacks of oversized, homemade note cards, bound by rubber bands and arranged like a city skyline on a large footstool. They are only a fraction of some 20,000 cards in the house, each printed with a word, its origin, pronunciation and definition.

These particular stacks contained the really hard words, the ones 13-year-old Tim Ruiter hadn't mastered yet.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 2, 2010 4:23 AM
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