A Spelling Quiz, From the Pages of The Times
We collected 15 challenging words that appeared in The Times. Let’s see how many you can spell correctly.
Here is your chance to compete in a spelling competition — much like the middle school students appearing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week.
All 15 words in this competition have appeared in The New York Times recently, and each one is read by a Times reporter or editor. If you want to hear the word’s definition, origin or context, click a button, and the Times journalist will give you the info. Anybody who has watched the National Spelling Bee will recognize the format.
The 15 words will get more difficult as you go through them. But our rules are more lenient than the national bee’s rules: You can keep playing even after you get a word wrong. At the end, we will tell you how you did compared with other Times readers. Good luck!
Spell this word.
Sentence
Definition
Origin
Part of speech
Read by Apoorva Mandavilli, a science reporter for The New York Times.
The source for definitions, parts of speech and languages of origin in this quiz was the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, which is the official dictionary of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. For words that did not appear in the unabridged version, The Times referred to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Some definitions have been condensed or edited for clarity.