Spelling Better Than Quayle Puts Boy, 12, on Talk Show

William Figueroa was just another 12-year-old on Monday. Then Vice President Dan Quayle came to town and turned him into “The Potato Kid,” the student who can spell better than Quayle.

Two days later, the sixth-grader and his family were basking in his new celebrity. William was interviewed outside his house Wednesday as he waited for a limousine to take him to New York City for the day’s taping of NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman.”

Quayle helped William gain fame during a spelling bee at Luis Munoz Rivera School. When the student wrote the word potato on the blackboard, the vice president prompted him to add an “e” to the end.

“The vice president should know how to spell,” William said Wednesday. “So that’s why everybody is making a big deal out of this blunder.”

But he sympathized with Quayle, who actually repeated another adult’s error when he read a handwritten flash card with the spelling potatoe .

“He probably feels embarrassed about that, probably mad a little bit,” said William, who speaks both English and Spanish. “But I hope he can take it. He’s always been taking it. Everybody’s always been making fun of him since he became vice president.”

David Beckwith, Quayle’s spokesman, said the vice president’s advance team had planned to screen the cards, but Quayle grabbed them before they got the chance.