A brain-teasing challenge, some school-day nostalgia, and a little cut-throat competition... It may not sound like a good recipe for making sparks fly, but it is. The latest idea for mingling and meeting a mate happens to be singles' spelling bees, which have become quite a hit.
Fueled by the popularity of books like Bee Season, documentaries like Spellbound, and even an off-Broadway hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, these events were the brainchild of Zac Kushner, coordinator of recreational programming for Makor (www.makor.org), an organization that specializes in offbeat mixers. "We're always trying to host fun events where what's going on is the focal point," he explains. "If you meet someone, that's an additional bonus. That's definitely the new wave of dating and meeting."
These spelling bees do sport some snazzy twists from the tense mood you may recall with a shudder from similar events during high school. For starters, at the New York City version Kushner oversees, there's an open bar for those who feel a martini could help calm their jitters. And the word categories-which include "uncomfortable things," "band names," and "mythological creatures"-show no one's taking this competition too seriously. While Kushner can't say for sure whether any of the contestants exchanged phone numbers, they definitely seemed to be bonding over their victories and, more often, their failures-which included misspellings of Snoop Doggy Dogg (two Gs!), chupacabra, and chlamydia. "I don't even think -meticulosity' is a word," laughs
Leah LaRiccia, a 29-year-old biologist who attended the event. But that comment sure beats "come here often?" as an ice-breaker.
New York-based freelance writer Laura Gilbert was eliminated from her town's spelling bee in grade school for tripping up on the word "aqueduct."
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