America's top spelling mistakes.

They're talking about a map published here at  dcist.  Interesting comments at the link.

In honor of Scripps National Spelling Bee Google pulled data on spelling search query "how to spell" by state. 

Utah looked up "leprechaun," Texas looked up "niece."North Dakotans inquired about "attitude." California asked for the spelling of "desert." 

I got that one. Dessert is sweet and delicious and has two S letters because you always want two desserts and desert has one S letter because once is enough for the desert. 

These are all smart people I'm surprised they bit. They're just playing. They all know better. Every one of these people, Insty, Zurcher, Taranto, Goldberg knows "how do you spell _____" is not how you query spelling. Collecting those queries then actually collects the most common words queried by people who haven't a clue how to query spelling. You simply type the word and if it's wrong then Google suggests the correct spelling. Usually. That's how spelling is queried. And there is no way to collect all those spelling queries because they appear simply as words spelled correctly or misspelled. The premise of the map is too flawed to be useful. I think all these people know that and they're all just having fun. 

Colorado, Jeez, disappointing, the spelling for "beautiful" isn't even mnemonic, it's just exaggeration bea U t-i-i-i-i ful.  Or is it full? Better check. 

South Dakota is checking "Gray" I bet because of the book Fifty Shades of Grey with its British spelling. This whole time they thought it was "gray." And it is. So the magnitude of the queries for [gray vs grey] is missed completely by counting as highest the far less number of queries for [spelling of gray]. 

This is what statisticians do when they're goofing around. It's just fun because they know it's all bogus. It's not how people search spelling. They're having fun with stats of people stumped on both spelling and search query. 

Credit where it is due: Two little very hard studying kids with disciplined habits and fer'ner last names tied for first place by spelling incredibly arcane words that they'll never have a chance to slip in ordinary conversation should they both live to 1,000 years for example Jairam Hathwar spelled "Feidenkrais" and Nihar Janga spelled "gesellschaft" to get to their first place spot. 

Tie endings like this are cool. After all that a sudden death match off would be too cruel.