Men cannot spell homogeneous (meaning of uniform nature). Women are bamboozled by chiaroscuro (artistic distribution of light and dark masses in a picture).

Under 18s struggle with aggrandise (to magnify), while adults playing on The Times Spelling Bee website were tripped up by proselytize (to convert religiously), complaisant (polite) and aficionado (an ardent supporter).

As finalists from 784 secondary schools gathered in London to compete in the first ever Times Spelling Bee, we looked at what were the hardest words and who were the hottest spellers on the Spelling Bee website, set up to encourage people of all ages to practise and celebrate their ability.

Far and away the most successful speller was Pam Pollin, a 60-year-old retired secretary from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. She racked up more than 1.6 million points, almost half a million ahead of her closest rival, “Brunhilde”.

Mrs Pollin gets up most days at 5am to play for 45 minutes. To date she has played 345 Spelling Bee games and took the separate Spelling Bee challenge 6,123 times. But children and teenagers were also keen contestants. In Buckinghamshire the word most commonly misspelt by under 18s was coterie, in Cornwall it was aberration and in Co Down it was gnaw. Children and teenagers from Dumfries struggled to spell explain, while in Gwent they were foxed by doggerel and allude eluded them.

The Times website, which was nominated for Best Education Site in this year’s Annual Webby Awards, has been viewed more than a million times since its launch last November. Its 17,000 registered users accumulate points through playing games that test spelling ability. The points awarded depend on the game and level of difficulty. Archaeology, buoyancy, antediluvian, smorgasbord and inchoate are among the 10,000 words that have caught people out.

On average women spelt 86 per cent of words correctly, while men were not far behind on 83.5 per cent. Those aged over 50 spelt, on average, 90 per cent of words correctly. For those aged under 18 it was 54 per cent. Seven of the highest ten scores came from female contestants.

Spelling ability varied around the UK, too. Players in Ayrshire were not in the know when it came to cognoscenti (one with highly refined taste), while those in West Yorkshire struggled with vacillate and garrotte. Londoners could not spell caliph (successors of Muhammad). Women from Berkshire, sacrilegiously, got sacrilegious wrong, while Dorset men messed up apocryphal.

The spelling bee website’s games range from a sudden death knockout to a head-to-head challenge, where players can pit their wits against friends or colleagues. Mrs Pollin’s favourite is the Spelling Challenge, where players have to spell 15 words in a row as quickly as possible.

More than 1.2 million games have been played to date, with students forming almost half the total registered users.

Number of times misspelt, and definitions:

Proselytize 853 (an attempt to convert someone from one religious faith to another)
Garrotte 825 (execution by strangulation)
Chiaroscuro 812 (the artistic distribution of light and dark masses in a picture)
Littoral 798 (of or relating to the shore)
Aficionado 792 (an ardent supporter)
Idiosyncrasy 787 (tendency, type of behaviour)
Minuscule 779 (very small)
Vacillate 752 (to fluctuate in one’s opinions)
Haemorrhage 743 (profuse bleeding from ruptured blood vessels) Apparatchik 719 (an official or bureaucrat)

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