Gentle breezes, balmy temperatures and a cloud-speckled, sparkling blue sky on a luxurious Sunday afternoon. What better way to spend it than holed up in a dreary library conference room taking a spelling test?

Or so thought 32 word freaks who hunkered down with pen and paper for an hour or so at the Santa Fe Public Library's annual adult spelling bee, a fundraiser for the Friends of the Library at the Main Branch on Washington Street.

"I wanted to see what happens when I try spelling without spell check," said Daniel Warnock, a University of New Mexico medical biology graduate student who made the trip from Albuquerque with friend Aaron Wallentine, a website developer.

However, it soon became clear that most common spell-check programs would not recognize many of the words.

Warnock and the others — all of them word-game junkies, some of whom are educators and others professionals whose use of the English language is paramount to their jobs — sat at tables writing down the 40 words, spelling them as best they could as Sven Redsun announced them from the front of the room.

Redsun, previously barred from the competition because he won too many times, is a math and tech expert with Qforma Inc., a health-sciences data company and a co-sponsor of the event.

On the job or in social situations, spelling is obviously important, Redsun said, not just because bad spelling is unprofessional and just plain tacky, but because it can lead to poor communication.

The competition also was something of a hearing test as well, as the soft-spoken Redsun recited the words and their definitions. Redsun selected all the words for the event, which grew increasingly difficult.

The first words were relatively easy: Titillate, nickel and banality were among those in the first of four rounds of 10. Then came echelon, aikido and keratoid, oneiric, heterozygous, espadrille and pluviometer, and finally, along with moans from the contestants, were ekistics, gjetost and syzygy.

"I love spelling and I think I'm really good at it," said Joy Rosenberg, director of education at Temple Beth Shalom, as she awaited the results. "But now I'm not so sure." (Rosenberg ended up spelling 27 of the words correctly.)

The winner, Margaret Caffey-Moquin, a lawyer for the state Public Regulation Commission, misspelled only three words: ekistics, cueca and Anacreontic.

"I love words," she said. "Mother was an English-lit major, and we would often read out loud and listen to books being read."

Caffey-Moquin lamented the current state of spelling, saying that bad spellers show their lack of attention to detail and their disregard for the history of words.

As the winner, she was headed home with a $200 check from Qforma; the second-place finisher, Virginia Gaines, received $125 from Los Alamos National Bank, and Morgan Farley, in third place, was given a $100 gift certificate to the Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse.

Dennis Carroll can be reached at Carroll.News1@gmail.com.