Spelling well is the best revenge

Unlike their earnest counterparts on the middle-school circuit, the spellers who compete at Bickett Gallery swap naughty jokes and sip Miller High Life.

Can you spell I-R-O-N-I-C H-I-P-S-T-E-R?

The spelling bee has hit the bar scene, and on Tuesday that meant indie-rock dudes in Jesus beards and girls with funky, black-rimmed glasses, vying for fame, fortune and free beer.

The competitors may have grown up, but their reasons for competing haven't.

"Everyone wants to show off how smart they are," said Claire Hester, who works part time at Bickett and helps to arrange and emcee the events.

The marriage of spelling and beer is a way to relive childhood memories in a grown-up way. Like a lot of the other folks associated with the competition, Hester retains spelling-bee memories from her youth. In seventh grade, Hester lost to a girl who later advanced to the national spelling bee. Not that she's bitter.

"She went to Georgetown. I work in a video store." (Spelling-bee co-host is just one of her jobs).

Spellers were called up one by one to spell into the microphone. Each contestant wore an entry number on a piece of blue construction paper, held around the neck with a length of orange ribbon. Spellers, however, get to choose their own entry number. One woman decided on "threeve."

To help ease jitters, the bout began with a practice round filled with words such as "soup," "milk" and "cake." Easy enough. But Sarah Ivey, 21, slipped up and began spelling "cake" with a "k."

"I corrected myself," she said later with a cut-me-some-slack look. "I was nervous."

Hester helped run the proceedings with an endearing, mean-teacher vibe. She shushed drinkers in the back when they got too loud and constructed colorful sentences to help bring words such as "refulgent," an adjective that means "shining brightly," to life.

Sample sentence: "If you want to get on a sweaty woman's good side, tell her she looks refulgent."

Ghostfinger, a band from Nashville, Tenn., provided the between-round entertainment.

Sample lyric: "I am a man having a baby. Isn't it crazy?"

The words, mostly associated with diseases and medicine, became progressively more difficult and some successful contestants became progressively more inebriated -- spell a word correctly, win a beer -- and the 22 contestants eventually dwindled to just a few.

After spellers stumbled on exophthalmos (an eye condition) and glomerulonephritis (a kidney disease), the next word -- hypothalamus -- was announced to boos from onlookers who were hoping for a more difficult test for the last speller standing.

"It's trickier than you think," Hester chided. "Shut up!"

Then 49-year-old mom Joyce Davis won the first-place prize of a massage with her spot-on spelling of the region of the brain.

Davis is a dedicated speller and has attended each of the bar's three bees. In the post-win afterglow, she talked about her love of words, and of being hooked on spelling bees since middle school.

"My children will be so proud."