A Bee

Aggrade. There's a word we're all familiar with, I'm sure... No? Me neither.It means to build up or raise the level of a land surface by depositing sediment, and I mention it because it was the word that knocked my 11-year-old grandson out of the Canadian national spelling bee junior finals last night. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we were able to watch this event live as it went out, and Ethan (for it is he) sailed into the final five, tackling words such as 'dystopian' and 'spelunking', before 'aggrade' came up and shattered his young dreams – well, actually he wasn't too bothered, and was pleased enough with his performance. But 'aggrade'... really. It was the only word in the competition I didn't know, though I might have had some difficulty as a result of the question master's wayward pronunciation (worst example, 'plaited' pronounced 'plated') and bizarre habit of announcing 'there are two different pronunciations for this word', then saying it exactly the same way…