Beezi offers spelling challenges at different levels

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Seeing the popularity of spelling bees and always having an interest in words himself, Tony Goldstein thought he'd turn spelling into a game.

Goldstein came up with Beezi, the spelling game.

"I've always enjoyed words," he said. "I read a lot."

And when the Leaside resident reads he keeps a dictionary close by to look up words for their meaning and pronunciation. He said words like "awry" and "segue" are used a lot in conversation by people, but in reality they are often spelled wrong because they aren't pronounced the way they are spelled.

"I love those kinds of words," he said.

Goldstein thought spelling might be a good concept for a game so three years ago he began work on his idea. He did a lot of research to make sure someone hadn't already thought of it. He went to stores and the New York toy fair wishing he wouldn't find anything similar to his idea.

"I went up and down the aisles with my fingers crossed and bated breath hoping I wouldn't see anything like I'd created," he said.

When he didn't find anything similar, he and his sister Robyn Goldstein set about to create Beezi.

The objective is to spell as many words correctly as you can to earn tokens (or bees) to try to fill up a honeycomb. There are 2,000 words in the game divided into four categories of difficulty: honey bee (the easiest), bumble bee, digger bee, and killer bee (the most difficult).

The game is geared towards those 12 and older.

A player rolls a die with the four categories on it, as well as a stinger (it means miss a turn) and a queen bee (allows the player to select the level), then he or she will have to spell the corresponding word, for example medulla in the digger category.

If the word is spelled correctly the player gets three honeycomb (or one for a word in the honey bee category, two for bumble and four for killer). The other players spell the word too and if the player gets it wrong all others who got it right get a bonus token.

"I know people think spelling is education, which it may well be..., but it is a lot of fun," Goldstein said.

And he contends one doesn't have to be a top speller to play.

"It's like Pictionary, you don't have to be a good drawer to have a lot of fun, in fact those who aren't as good make it more fun," Goldstein said.

The former owner of a chain of retail stores, Goldstein has never done anything like this before.

"This was all completely new to me," he said. "This was a learning curve for me."

The game was launched at the 2008 Canadian Toy and Hobby Fair earlier this year and it is now available in some stores.

Goldstein is now working on a kids version of the game targeted at Grades 3 to 6.

For more information, visit www.beezibeez.com