Adult Spelling Bees Are Officially a Thing

Can You Spell Z-E-I-T-G-E-I-S-T ? / Illustration by Hagan McLeod

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It is no surprise that in an age of unconscionable* horrors, many find themselves mired in megrims* and nostalgic for the halcyon* days of their youth. What is unexpected is that lately, Philadelphia has responded to the circumstances with a spate of adult spelling bees.

I first noticed the trend back in May, when the creators of the zine The Philadelphia Citywide asked to host a zine launch and spelling bee at the Pen and Pencil Club, where I’m on the board. A fellow board member was incredulous: Would anyone really attend? Lo and behold, the bee packed the house and was our most profitable day of the year so far.

Then I noticed that Harmonie Hall in Roxborough had recently hosted a combo chili cook-off and spelling bee. In June, Midbrow Philly wrote about two spelling bees happening in South Philly on the same day. In July, the Funky Food Fest at Pentridge Station in West Philly included a food-themed spelling bee, inspired, host Florian Francis Spece told me, by all the other recent bees.

Clearly, enthusiasm for orthography* is in the zeitgeist,* with no sign of surceasing.*

(Lest you accuse me of logodaedaly [noun: arbitrary or capricious coinage of words] or catachresis [noun: use of the wrong word for the context], I borrowed my newfound vocabulary from spelling bee organizers. See more in the sidebar.)

Co-host of the Citywide spelling bee Larissa Sapko told me she’d been inspired by the recent fad for goofy in-person competitions and public stunts, like the rotisserie chicken guy and the wave of look-alike contests. But she hadn’t seen any spelling bees yet. The response to the Citywide’s was immediate. More than 20 people signed up to spell.

“A lot of the feedback we got from the sign-up form was along the lines of ‘I’m trying to exorcise my childhood trauma from my seventh-grade spelling bee,’” Sapko said. “They felt like this was an attempt to confront this element of their childhood, which wasn’t really what we were anticipating.”

That’s what brought Bill Gravitz to the P&P that night. When he struck out on goad in eighth grade, he thought he’d never get another chance. “Adult spelling bees were unheard of in 1977,” he said. Now, he seeks them out around the region. The Citywide’s was his first in Philadelphia.

That night, the spellers were neither pococurante* nor flibbertigibbety.* Participants showed up early to drill each other on word lists. Perhaps spurred on by pot-valor,* the spellers bravely navigated round after round, during which the spectators in the packed bar abstained from any persiflage.* A tense silence reigned while spellers ventured their best guesses, broken by wild applause when spellers progressed and conciliatory cheers when they struck out.

Gravitz won on the word zymurgy* and then gave an extemporaneous speech about how something bad always happens to him this time of year, and now he could finally say something good had happened. Musician, writer, and fellow speller Pierce Jackson got the entire room chanting “Something good!” The mood was positively frabjous.*

“In a city like Philadelphia where there’s no shortage of debauchery, good, clean fun is in itself a welcome commodity,” Jackson told me.

In adult years, you just don’t get grades anymore. And it’s nice to be told you’ve done a good job at something.”

Anna Ladd, who organized one of the South Philly spelling bees (mostly for a crowd of friends), said she didn’t realize spelling contests were in vogue until she learned another was happening at Cartesian Brewing the same day. Ladd borrowed a spelling list from the Scripps National Spelling Bee, aiming for a mixture of easy and hard vocabulary. The response was mostly positive.

“I encouraged the audience to boo in the manner of Philadelphia, but they mostly didn’t boo the spellers,” she said. Instead, they heckled the organizer. “It turns out everyone gets really mad at you when you tell them to spell onychorrhexis.*”

A fifth-grade spelling bee winner, Ladd also chalked up the trend to nostalgia, noting a similar uptick in events that hark back to the beloved Scholastic book fair. She’s thinking of hosting an event where people run the mile like in middle school PE.

“In adult years, you just don’t get grades anymore. And it’s nice to be told you’ve done a good job at something,” she said.

But it’s also scary to strike out. I still remember misspelling aren’t in my own fourth-grade spelling bee. I placed the apostrophe between the e and the n, and then blamed my newly acquired contact lenses when I started to cry at my desk. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the trend is that people are willing to risk the ignominy* of a public mistake.

“Nerve-racking, definitely,” Jackson said of his spelling experience, which ended on emphysema.* “Humbling. … But then it was a relief because I was done and I didn’t have to spell anymore.”

* Word for Word

Test your mettle (and that of your friends!) with these words from recent adult spelling bees. Remember, according to Scripps National Spelling Bee rules, spellers may ask for a definition, part of speech, and any alternative pronunciations.

• Emphysema (n.) a condition characterized by air-filled expansions of body tissues
• Flibbertigibbety (adj.) silly and flighty
• Frabjous (adj.) wonderful
• Halcyon (adj.) characterized by happiness, great success, and prosperity
• Ignominy (n.) humiliation
• Megrims (n.) a state of low spirits
• Onychorrhexis (n.) longitudinal ridging and splitting of the nails
• Orthography (n.) the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage
• Persiflage (n.) frivolous bantering talk
• Pococurante (adj.) indifferent, nonchalant
• Pot-valor (n.) boldness or courage resulting from alcoholic drink
• Surcease (v.) to come to an end
• Unconscionable (adj.) shockingly unfair or unjust
• Zeitgeist (n.) the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era
• Zymurgy (n.) the applied science and chemistry of fermentation

Published as “Can You Spell Z-E-I-T-G-E-I-S-T ?” in the October 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.