So You Think You Can Spell?: Killer Quizzes for the Incurably Competitive and Overly Confident

by David Grambs, Ellen S. Levine

A cornucopia of spelling challenges—from the deceptively simple to the truly vexing—for good, better, and exceptional spellers (or those who want to be). So You Think You Can Spell? is a handy way to go one on one, pencil to paper, against hard, harder, and heartless words. The challenges vary from three- and five-word mini-quizzes to fifty-worders, from tests of quite familiar (but ever misspelled) words to those rife with vowel, consonant, or silent-letter booby traps. This unique volume also tests one's spelling smarts in the arts and sciences, international cuisine, and geography. All in all, this is a book to settle the ultimate Just how good a speller are you?

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2009

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

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You think you know. ...But you don't know.

(I did find one typo in the answer key, but it wasn't a spelling error).

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good grief. I enter and pronounce at spelling bees and have seen many manuals and cute little test books. For just about all of them, I've chuckled and said, "Oh, fie! I know the difference between "-able" and "-ible." So when someone told me to get this book, I did so, my nose in the air.

Ah, how the mighty fall! That nose fell quickly out of joint, and I am now in the process of realizing that, while I'm no slouch orthographically speaking, I'm not a know-it-all. The book is roughly 200 pages of tests, not counting the answers and essays on the history of our language and why 'nuff sed may be easy to spell, but it's not accurate if you follow etymological bloodlines. All the quizzes have a theme regarding a quirk or "rule" of spelling, which is not stated and which you don't know until you complete the test and check your answers. You'll learn a lot, from biological or medical words like "anopheles" (look it up) to those pesky double letters in Italian cognates (I keep forgetting the number of p's, r's, and z's in paparrazzi."

If you love to spell, get this book. I can auger--er--augur that you'll find it valuable.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

addictive!

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always prided myself on my spelling ability. This book knocked me down quite a few pegs. Loved it!