Does Fox not know how to spell “Buttafuoco”? They gave Brett Butler credit for “Buttafucco”, and it affected the outcome. Or am I misspelling the word? I’m getting this from imdb and imdb
Also, Alice Cooper and Sherman Helmsley got the shaft on foreign words like “quoits” and “kreplach”.
Bad move by David Faustino for not going to the expert speller, but it wouldn’t have helped him.
“Quoits” is an obscure word nowadays, but it is not foreign. Indeed, it goes back to Middle English:
And “kreplach” is perfectly simple to spell if you know a little Yiddish or German. 
Buttafucco is an alternate spelling. All you have to do is google it.
Hmm, I’m not convinced it’s a valid spelling. Google gives 18,300 hits for “buttafuoco” and only 650 for “buttafucco”.
But then again, Google does give 166,000 hits for the incorrect “dennis leary”, but only 139,000 hits for the correct “denis leary”. Similarly, 31,000 hits for the incorrect “gary trudeau” and 20,600 hits for the correct “garry trudeau”.
Audiatur et altera pars. You’re presuming that all people have to spell their names the same way famous people do. There’s no reason for that. There can be plenty of guys named George Busch.
In the case of the Long Island couple made famous when the husband had an ill-advised fling with a teenaged girl who later shot the wife in the head, the proper spelling is Buttafuoco.
This was illustrated in high comedic fashion on an episode of SNL from the time that all three networks were airing their Long Island Lolita telepictures. SNL did a spoof in the style of a Masterpiece Theatre presentation, hosted by Jan Hooks, who overpronounced everything in a faux British style. The couple’s name, thusly, became But-ahhh-foo-oh-co.
Is “Buttafucco” a word as well, or did they ask Brett to spell a proper noun? You don’t usually do that in a spelling bee. Of course, this wasn’t a normal spelling bee either.
I think the host alluded to Joey Buttafuoco, or the famous trial… I’d have to dig out my tape to be sure. And yes, it is a proper noun.
I’m sure he mentioned Joey B. I too was surprised by a proper name in the spelling bee.