CIMA Spellmaster – Rapid Fire proves too hot
View(s):How many could spell 15 words in 30 seconds, this was one of the few new challenges posed to the top 10 competitors battling for the title of Spellmaster. Now down to 10 competitors, none of whom seem like they’re willing to bow out and made every effort to hold on to their places, despite the new formats being introduced.
As normally done in the final rounds competition, competitors previously notified, officials introduced in the concept of the “Students choice”, “Rapid Fire” and choice from a country of origin. This created quite a stir among the competitors. At the students’ choice round, an element of the 1st round of words; competitors had the choice of giving another contestant a word of their liking. This proved to be quite interesting, considering that the words they gave each other were much tougher than what they got from the table. As always, all contestants were given three words in the 
1st round, the students’ choice being one, the other consisted of letters of the alphabet except of course the letters, ‘W’, ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ as they had a limited number of words, each letter had a choice of 5 words, and contestants could choose a letter from which a word was given, and introduced in the previous week’s competition and for the 1st time this year, country of origin. Contestants were asked to select an origin from French, German, Italian or Latin, which had a choice of 5 words, from which they could select and a word that derived from the particular origin was given to them. Finally, came the “rapid fire” round, each contestant was given 15 words which they had to spell within 30 seconds.
At the end of the rounds of words as well as the “rapid fire”, it was clear who the contestants that got through were. Charya of Visakha Vidyalaya scored the highest in the rapid fire round, spelling 9 words of 15 correct. Following closely behind in a tie were Lidushan of Highlands’ College Hatton, Wishmitha of S.Thomas’ Preparatory School and Ruchini from Girls’ High School Kandy, scoring 8 words of the fifteen. The lowest scorers in the “Rapid Fire” round were Sazna of St.Andrew’s Balika, Areeba of St.Agnes’ Balika and Bhagya Samarakoon of Visakha Vidyalaya, all scoring just four. Areeba was automatically disqualified as she had misspelled the previous 3 words given to her as well, on her exit she said “I’m happy I got this far and so will my school that I got into the Top 10.” She continued to say that the competition improved her vocabulary as well.
Sazna and Bhagya Samarakoon were in a tie, as both competitors spelled 2 words in the 1st round and got a total of 4 at the rapid fire, giving them a grand score of 6, leaving them to fight it out for the one spot to the Top 8. Sazna received the word “religiosity” and Bhagya “scallion” which both spelled correctly. Sazna’s next word was “unguent” which she unfortunately spelled with an “a”, it was now up to Bhagya, whose word was “vorticism”, and she spelled it spot on.
Sazna too said the competition improved her vocabulary, as well as her self confidence and she enjoyed taking part in this interesting competition and would encourage others to participate as well.
As the competition nears the grand final of the Top 4, tune into Sirasa TV to catch the thrills and chills of Spellmaster every Sunday from 6 pm – 7 pm.
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