For Couch Potatoes: Boy Who Outspelled Vp Serves Up Peels Of Laughter

NEW YORK - William Figueroa, the sixth-grader who outspelled Dan Quayle, helped David Letterman make the vice president look like a potato head.

The 12-year-old got $200 to appear on last night's show and tell a gleeful Letterman about the day Quayle visited a Trenton, N.J., school and had the boy add an "e" to "potato" after Figueroa spelled it correctly.

"I knew he was wrong," the boy said. "Since he's the vice president, I went and put the `e' on, and he said, `That's right, now go sit down.'

"Afterwards I went to the dictionary, and there was `potato' like I spelled it. I showed the reporters the book, and they were all laughing about what a fool he was."

Letterman asked him if he thought Quayle could spell "re-elected." The boy looked uncomfortable and didn't answer. He had a "no comment" when he was asked by Letterman who he would vote for - if he were old enough to vote.

Quayle, in an interview yesterday with KRON-TV of San Francisco, said: "I should have caught the mistake on that spelling-bee card. But as Mark Twain once said, `You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word.' "

Quayle had visited the Luis Munoz Rivera School in Trenton, N.J., Monday to promote the Weed and Seed program, which uses federal and state money to take back neighborhoods from drug dealers.

Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer said that the flashcard with "potatoe" written on it, which Quayle was using, had been prepared by an adult involved in the after-school program, not a teacher.

Yesterday, as Figueroa waited in Trenton for a limousine to take him to the taping of "Late Night with David Letterman" at NBC studios, he said he sympathized with Quayle.

"He probably feels embarrassed about that, probably mad a little bit," he said. "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."