Death by Spelling: A Compendium of Tests, Super Tests, and Killer Bees

by David Grambs

Book Overview

Is it absesses, abscesses, or abcesses? Rottisserie or rotisserie? These are just some of the stupefying words included in this huge, witty, and fiendishly difficult collection of spelling bees designed to challenge even the most dexterous orthographer.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060964014
• ISBN13: 9780060964016
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 317 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Hardest English spelling challenges ever

As someone who is said to have "freakish" spelling abilities, I can tell you that this is indeed one of the toughest sets of spelling challenges ever collected in the English language. Music terms borrowed from Italian are what did me in, hardly seems fair. Is it "obbligatto" or "obligatto" or "obbligato"? or "obligato"?

A Whole New World of Words

I picked this book up when I started competing in the Over-50 Spelling Bee. The book is chock full of words I've heard, read, and said but never tried to write. On top of that it's full of words I've never even heard or seen before I came upon them in the tests. The format is great because while some of the tests are multiple choice, others give the definition and a phonetic spelling from which I have to search my brain to figure out the various spellings of that sound depending on the language from which it may have come or just the chance of how the spelling may have evolved from whim. Most of the tests are based on commonality of the words such as culinary words, words from religion or philosophy, words associated with medicine or physics. I am never bored by this book of tests or the commentary in the first half of the book. It was well worth buying.