The day before the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Google Trends tweeted a map of the United States with the words each state searches “how to spell” the most.
And the results were all over the map—so to speak.
Words varied in length and difficulty, NBC News reports. There was “nanny” in Mississippi, and “liar” in Rhode Island. Some states had more complicated words like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from Mary Poppins in Connecticut and West Virginia.
The most shocking, and ironic, was Wisconsin. According to Google Trends, Wisconsinites do not know how to spell “Wisconsin.”
Tom Karls, an administrative clerk for Madison Public Library in Wisconsin, told NBC News, “If you look at how people spell on the Internet, that also should scare you.”
He added it was “dumbfounding” Wisconsinites did not know how to spell their own state.
"It becomes a great commentary on the education trends of our society," Karls said.
While Wisconsin is the only state this year that can’t spell its own name, Massachusetts took the crown last year. This year residents are having problems with the word “license.”
