What to watch for during Miss America Pageant

ATLANTIC CITY - Inside Boardwalk Hall, Miss Kentucky fiddled.

Go ahead, make the joke. Was Ramsey Carpenter and her green fiddle the Boardwalk's version of Nero, fiddling while Atlantic City collapsed?

Was the entire Miss America Organization using its collective blinders to soldier on last week, even as thousands of casino workers were losing their jobs and yet another casino went bankrupt before a contestant had even shown one shoe?

Never mind. (Contestants who were supposed to stay at the defunct Revel were sent to Borgata.) Atlantic City doesn't trouble itself with those questions. That has always been the point of Miss America, the original denier of the seashore reality that the busy season was over.

With all due respect to the reality outside the still gorgeous and cavernous Boardwalk Hall, which in truth has aged better than a few of the former Miss Americas who are in town this week (and which never reveals its secrets - unlike Kate Shindle (Miss America 1998), who will be mischievously signing copies of her eye-opening memoir/expose, Behind the Rhinestone Curtain, at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tropicana), the judges sent a clear message by selecting Carpenter for a preliminary talent win.

Fiddle away, Miss America!

And so, in that spirit, here are 10 things to watch for Sunday, when the pageant celebrates its 60th year on television, beginning at 9 p.m. on ABC. (Preceded by an hour live-behind-the-scenes buildup show.)

1 Miss Rhode Island. Ivy DePew was the breakout star of the preliminaries, giving the pageant a scare on the first night by collapsing on stage, as Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno recited her own achievements and as voters back home were deciding a gubernatorial primary. Everybody's thoughts turned to DePew, Guadagno stopped mid-resumè, the other contestants formed a chain of linked arms, and paramedics took the stage.

DePew, a redhead, was hospitalized for dehydration, released, taken back the next day after rehearsal to get another round of IV fluids, then made a triumphant return to the stage for Night 2, thanked "our sponsor, AtlantiCare" and performed a flute solo in which she literally pulled a piccolo out of her gown. Brilliant!

2 The tall and the small. Miss Nebraska, Megan Swanson, is 6 feet tall, a fact she wove into her talent choice of "You Raise Me Up."

She was photographed with her roommate, Miss New Jersey, Cierra Kaler-Jones, a Rutgers student who looks a foot shorter. They became famous on Instagram.

3 Local angles. Go ahead and root for Miss Pennsylvania, Amanda Smith, who snagged a preliminary talent win with a vocal performance of "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," but she's Pittsburgh all the way. . . . Kaler-Jones grew up in Galloway, is the daughter of two casino workers at Harrah's, and is on the Rutgers dance team. She gave solid performances on all nights, as did . . . Miss Delaware, Brittany Lewis, whose Jersey roots are equally strong. Lewis grew up in Brigantine, attended Holy Spirit High School, and is the daughter of Willie Lewis, who is the chef at Atlantic City's popular Kelsey's Soul Food Restaurant, just a few blocks from Boardwalk Hall.

4 Current events. Three of the contestants, Delaware's Lewis, Miss New York, and Miss West Virginia have platforms about domestic-violence awareness, but none mentioned Ray Rice during onstage questions in preliminaries. Miss Iowa, Aly Olson, on the other hand, referenced Ferguson, Mo., in her discussion of her "Diversity Everyday" platform.

5 Intros. Many of the contestants tried different introductions on each of the preliminary nights. Miss New Jersey bounced from the cheeky "diner state" to "freshly picked Garden State" to "birthplace of college football." Here's hoping she goes back to diner.

Deepest dive into Wikipedia goes to Miss Nebraska, who said she was from the state "with the largest collegiate weight room."

6 Fit or famished. The judges, including former Green Bay Packer Donald Driver, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, and Brig. Gen. Anne Macdonald, seem to favor the athletic misses in swimsuit preliminaries. Miss Oklahoma boasted of working out two hours a day, five days a week, and cheating on doughnuts. Miss Maryland's routine is a mere one hour a day, four days a week. Shindle's book tells harrowing tales of eating and exercise disorders. But the trend seems to be toward abs.

7 The art of STEM? Miss New Jersey wants to find the art embedded in physics and other sciences. But so does Miss Illinois, who wants to turn STEM into STEAM by adding A for art. The more compelling platforms seemed personal: Miss Alabama, Caitlin Brunell, has Caitlin Closet, which dates to when she was 7 and lost everything in a house fire; Miss Ohio's MS awareness (she has it); Miss West Virginia Paige Madden has "Silence Hides Violence," inspired by her own difficult childhood.

Lewis, Miss Delaware, attributes her domestic-violence-awareness platform to a terrible tragedy in her background: Her sister, Gina Clarke-Lewis, was murdered in 2010 in Lindenwold.

8 Talent? Night 1 preliminary winner was Miss Ohio, Mackenzie Bart, who did a ventriloquist act, a talent shared by Miss America 1965, Vonda Kay Van Dyke, crowned after another tough summer in Atlantic City.

There were the usual talent oddities not likely to pop up in the final 15, but one can hope: hula by Hawaii, Tahitian by Colorado, clogging to "Think" by Aretha Franklin (South Carolina). Miss New York did the so-called Cups song to "Happy," which mostly looked like someone sitting and banging a plastic cup on stage.

Miss Maine, Audrey Thames, bravely stepped out of the box with a "comedic monologue" - a version of the tongue-twisting "Yma Dream," originally performed by Anne Bancroft, which would provide actual entertainment if she were to get to perform it Sunday, which is not likely.

9 Outliers. Miss Rhode Island and her medical scare set the tone, and some of the usually overlooked contestants seemed to step up their game this year. Miss Maryland snagged swimsuit. Miss D.C., Teresa Davis, and Miss Vermont, Lucy Edwards, looked amazing in evening wear, Miss Puerto Rico killed with her flamenco-fusion dance to Queen's "We Will Rock You." The charismatic Miss Virgin Islands, Ashley Richelle Gabriel, wears braces, which would be a Miss A first, though not as profound nor likely to set off a global celebration/freakout as did Nina Davuluri's Indian American triumph.

Predictions. Top 15: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Jersey, West Virginia, and a wild card, Miss Puerto Rico. Winner: Miss Alabama, Caitlin Brunell.