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I am sorry, I didn't say "Rebel" or "Carpetbagger"... Perhaps if I use it in a sentence?
Spelling bees have been in American schools since the 1800s--they are a good academic way to satisfy competitive spirit in youth, and for the most part on the local level it's just good fun between brainiacs. No idea about national level, though. Some kids are actually smart, a few just memorize dictionaries--since the oldest age you can be in a Bee is your 8th grade year (about 13 years old), very few participants have the attention span to go to the work of memorizing dictionaries.
English is a good language to have a spelling bee in because there are a lot of silent letters, a lot of words that are not spelled phonetically, words borrowed and/or corrupted from nearly every worthwhile spoken language, and sometimes words are just plain strange.
Fate - the last E is not pronounced, it is "FAYt" (maybe "FAYtuh") not "Fay-tee"
Orgasmic - the Z sound can be made with s or z. There's no rule of thumb to be sure.
coup - borrowed from French and not pronounced like a residence for chickens although that's what it looks like. Many borrowed words retain the pronunciations of their original languages, which means you have to know where the hell a word is just plain coming from to say it sometimes.
fajita - a Mexican food with a "h"-sound J. Although I have witnessed one pronunciation "fuh JEYE tuh", to much laughter.
words that are just plain strange:
words that are spelled alike but aren't sound alike
that are sounded alike but aren't spelled alike
synonyms that have exactly the same definition and usage
words with multiple definitions
words with multiple pronunciations
on top of that, you get to throw accents in and regional variations in spelling and word usage--a cockney, australian, and Louisianan could not have a decent conversation together without translative aid.
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