Mind Games

Almost needless to say, America has divided into two camps since Edward Eggleston wrote his 1871 novel The Hoosier Schoolmaster, a celebration of tenacious spelling competitions in Indiana. Those who followed Eggleston's spirit created the National Spelling Bee 77 years ago. The other faction is best personified by Mark Twain, who, four years after Eggleston's book, crashed a local bee in Hartford and announced, "I don't see the point of spelling a word correctly, and I never did."

Apparently Twain didn't get ESPN. Otherwise he, like thousands these days, might have been eagerly anticipating the network's annual word-by-word coverage of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee live from Washington, D.G, on May 29 and 30.

If you think the Bee is just a G-rated Revenge of the Nerds, you're in denial. Spelling has arrived, and the competition is riveting. "The kids train incredibly hard," says Paige Kimble, president of the Bee. "They're committed to learning origins and definitions; it's exhausting, and they must have poise. The Bee has the drama of a sporting event."

Oh, baby, does it. Miss a letter and you're gone. Last year's Bee closed with an unbearably tense showdown between eighth-graders Kristin Karin Hawkins from Sterling, Va., and Sean Conley of Anoka, Minn. When Hawkins missed on resipiscence, Conley spelled succedaneum to win the $10,000 first prize. You think Gretzky scoring eight goals a game at age six was prodigious? Conley could spell Albuquerque at two.

"Kristin was intimidating," says Michael Hessenauer, 13, who muffed cancelli and finished third. "She just went up there and spelled. She didn't ask for roots or origins or anything. That kind of confidence can get into your head."

Hessenauer, who's back in the final this year, is a goalkeeper in a junior Olympic soccer program in Ohio and one of the Bee culture's numerous two-sport stars. "This will be the second year I've missed my soccer championships to spell," he says. "That's O.K Spelling's the hardest thing I do. The pressure's pretty insane."

The Bee, which will have a record 250 finalists this year, is at the center of a raging brain-game fever. In March the 25th annual crossword puzzle championships drew competitors aged 17 to 81. Last month a chemical engineer from North Carolina, Scott Hag-wood, won his second straight USA Memory Championships, an unforgettable event in which competitors memorized the order of a deck of playing cards in less than five minutes. "He's a mental athlete," says Tony Dottino, the contest's founder. "The brain is a muscle, and you have to keep it in shape."

Hagwood is off to London for the World Memory Championships this August. "I'm in training," he says. "I eat Fiber One, I go to the gym two hours a day, and I memorize things. I have a method I can't explain. Say I want to remember the seven of spades—I picture Dudley Moore playing the piano."

The spelling bee, though, remains the crudest event, mixing memory and desire. So much is at stake: the money, the prestige, the guest shot on Letterman. Last month Carl and Ellen Herling of Massachusetts ripped the officials at a regional bee, calling the contest "a sham" after a pronouncer's definition led their son, Ryan, to mix up principal and principle. Yes, we now have aggressive, vocal spelling parents. And you thought this wasn't a sport.