English Spellingsssss !!

Sometimes I end up watching sports channels when they telecast unusual sports/games…one being dart board….A few days back, I caught up with english spelling competition that happened in the US few days back…guess what…the winner is a girl of Indian origin Kavya Shivshankar (hope I spelt her name right. :P)…
The competition already had reached it’s last 10 mins of climax when I tuned in…and not sure how many of us know how this competiton works…the participants are on stage and take the mike and the questioner asks from outside the stage…
The participants can only ask 3 questions (they are life lines available for all questions)…1. What is the origin of the word (It would be mostly Greek or Latin or both as we all know of English). Thats perhaps why all words they asked sounded like greek and latin to me. hehe…2. Meaning of the word…well, this doesnt help much as one of the words meant some kind of a earthworm…how helpfull !!!! 3. Are there any other pronounciation for the word…
The question that Kavya cracked was “‘Laodicean”…phew!!!…She very cutely (she is 13 and so I used the word cute) writes on her palm with her finger before telling the answer…The runner-up guy couldn’t spell “Maecenas”..I felt poor for the 12 yr old boy…I didn’t know spelling of the word “spelling” when I was 12 yrs… ;-))
Well it was a different experience !!!