It was no novelty for contestants in the National Spelling Bee to be in distress, but in the 23rd annual Scripps-Howard contest in Washington, D.C. last week even the judges had a bad time.
The trouble began in the first round when 13-year-old Audrey Mathews of Washington was sent down in tears for spelling supersede with a "c." Four rounds later, red-faced judges called her back after finding that such a respectable authority as Webster's unabridged dictionary accepted Audrey's spelling as a correct variant. Nobody could remember when National Spelling Bee judges had ever had to reverse themselves in such fashion. And...
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