THE following four pages display the 28 young men and women who emerged at
the tops of their respective heaps in our three-month nationwide odyssey in search of the best spellers in Malaysian schools.

Collectively, they represent an astonishing trove of talent. For those of us conducting this contest, arriving at these 28 paragons was a humbling experience. How grievously we had underestimated the abilities of our schoolgoing generation! These guys (a slightly majority of them girls) are good.

The experience also emphatically affirmed the axiom that spelling is an individual talent; a measure of an exceptional, uncommon ability. Spelling contests must be designed around the best, not the rest. Otherwise, the best get cocky.

This might be disheartening for those who lack the uncanny ability to visualise a word in their minds — even if they've never come across it — and "see" the letters constituting it. But it's a special skill.

Some "see" all the right letters but recite them in the wrong order; others dissect a word into its syllables but drop one or two; some mime writing out the word with a finger — but all must have the peculiar ability to visualise written symbols.

This does not, alas, include the many hundreds of contestants all over the country whose entire SIR experience was limited to the 20 seconds or less it took to get their first word wrong.

The project has been criticised for the brutal efficiency with which the least capable spellers were excised from the field, their fortunes made or broken on a single word. As this was the inaugural SIR, though, it had to be somewhat of a testing ground — for the organisers as much as the contestants. At the outset, no one quite knew what to expect, where to set the standards, or how to be fair to all.

Now we do. For those who made it past the carnage of the preliminary rounds, the contest was fought tooth and nail. Time after time, top contenders engaged in tremendous "baseline rallies" of words, in ding-dong battles to see who was smarter, more durable, or luckier.

Yes, luck. Both "of the draw", if contestants happened to know the word they were asked to spell, and "of the Irish", if they could guess correctly. With luck in the equation, every contestant capable of reaching a state final could have won the day — as no one knows better than the 28 who did, and whose portraits consequently appear over the next two spreads.

The stakes for the SIR national finalists are therefore even greater than anticipated: not only are they competing for themselves and their schools, friends and families, they will also have to show the nearly 2,000 who entered the competition why they're the ones to be taking the stage at Auditorium Muzium Negara this Aug 9.

They will have ample scope to prove their mettle. The SIR Finals will be run "roundrobin", with each finalist having to spell between five and 10 words to determine those who deserve to vie for the top honours.

The words for the finals have been chosen with a view to testing vocabulary and general knowledge as well as raw spelling prowess — better-read contestants may have an edge.

Among the 28 state winners we proudly present on the following pages, two will emerge as National SIR Champions on Aug 9.

They will be the best and brightest of the best and brightest.

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NST Associate Editor Rehman Rashid chairs the SIR content committee