A few of the youth declined to participate altogether, but some made a commendable attempt and performed relatively well.
"D-i-double r-ea," a man said after misspelling diarrhoea.
Words with irregular vowel sounds, such as bougie, diarrhoea, and croissant, were the most misspelled.
"B-o-u-j-e-e," said one participant, following the American spelling convention instead of the South African one.
"Analysing South Africa's list of most misspelled words for 2026, we found silent letters, irregular vowel sounds, tricky suffixes, difficult consonant blends, weird double letters, British spelling that uses extra letters, French loanwords that break every phonics rule.
English spelling and pronunciation are often irregular," said a spokesperson for a word unscrambling platform.
