THE BIBLE and the Constitution may merit your trust, but not spell check. In our Feb. 15 editorial "Closed-shop R's," we relied on the word-flagging program to spell the site of the famous battle involving King Leonidas' 300 Spartans and King Xerxes' Persian throng and wrote "Thermopile." No. It's Thermopylae, which spell check at this moment is marking with a squiggly red underline.

There is, alas for our self-esteem, a word spelled "Thermopile." It has nothing to do with brave warriors. A thermopile (per Webster's) is "a device consisting of a series of thermocouples, used for measuring minute changes in temperature or for generating thermoelectric current."

Thermopylae is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning "hot gateways." There evidently were hot sulfur springs there. (Stick with us, kids. It ain't much fun but it's educational.) We must add (bitterly) that an alternative spelling of Thermopylae is "Thermopiles"--with an "s." So like the basketball player who tries to swish a jump shot but instead banks it in for two points, spell check missed the shot enough to make it--almost. But not quite, which is why you are reading this.

We are not trusting spell check anymore. It tells us, for instance, that "Leonidas" above is misspelled and suggests as an alternative "Lemonades" (which if we went for that would truly cause bitterness). So Charon can row spell check straight to Hades and, no, we don't mean Sharon.