it has been solved as suggested, and I only needed to put space in the find code:
Topic.where("title LIKE '% %'").find_each do |topic|
topic.title.gsub!(/-/," ")
topic.fancy_title.gsub!(/-/," ")
topic.slug.gsub!(/-/," ")
puts topic.title
begin
topic.save!
rescue
puts "oops, something broke."
end
end