Scripps National Spelling Bee

The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly called the National Spelling Bee) is a highly competitive annual spelling bee in the United States, with participants from other countries as well. It is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scripps Company and is held the week following Memorial Day weekend, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center hotel in Oxon Hill, Maryland near Washington, D.C. Historically, the competition has been open to, and remains open to, the winners of sponsored American regional spelling bees. Over the years, the competition has been opened to contestants from Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, New Zealand, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Ghana, Germany, South Korea, and Delaware. Participants from countries other than the United States must be regional spelling-bee winners as well. Since 1994, ESPN has televised the later rounds of the bee; since 2006, earlier rounds have aired on the cable channel during the day, and the Championship Finals have aired in primetime on ABC.

History

The National Spelling Bee was formed in 1925 as a consolidation of numerous local spelling bees, organized by The Courier-Journal in Louisville. Frank Neuhauser won the first National Spelling Bee held that year, by successfully spelling "gladiolus."^[1][2] Later, the E.W. Scripps Company acquired the rights to the program. The bee is held in late May and/or early June of each year. It is open to students who have not yet completed the eighth grade, reached their 15th birthday, nor won a previous National Spelling Bee. Its goal is educational: not only to encourage children to perfect the art of spelling, but also to help enlarge their vocabularies and widen their knowledge of the English language.

An insect bee is featured prominently on the logo of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, despite the word "bee" being completely unrelated to the name of the insect. The origin of the word "bee" as used in "spelling bee" is unclear. "Bee" refers to "a gathering", where people join together in an activity.^[3], and the origin of this sense of "bee" is related to the word "been".^[4]

The Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational promotion, administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company and 288 sponsors in the United States, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.

Sponsorship is available on a limited basis to daily and weekly newspapers serving English-speaking populations around the world. Each sponsor organizes a spelling bee program in its community with the cooperation of area school officials: public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, and home schools.

Schools enroll with the national office to ensure their students are eligible to participate and to receive the materials needed to conduct classroom and school bees. During enrollment, school bee coordinators receive their local sponsor’s program-specific information—local dates, deadlines, and participation guidelines.

The official study booklet is available free online.^[5]

The champion of each sponsor’s final spelling bee advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in Washington, D.C.

The Spelling Bee Competition

Qualifying Regional Competitions

Sukanya Roy, Champion of the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Her winning word was cymotrichous

To qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a speller must win a regional competition. Each region may set its own rules for a spelling bee. Regional rules may not correspond exactly with the national spelling bee.

Most school and regional bees (known to Scripps as local spelling bees) use the official study booklet. Until 1994, the study booklet was known as "Words of the Champions"; from 1994 to 2006, the study booklet was the category-based "Paideia", and in 2007 was changed to the 701-word "Spell It!". The current booklet is published by Merriam-Webster in association with the National Spelling Bee. "Spell It!" contains about 1150 words, divided primarily by language of origin, along with exercises and activities in each section. This booklet will be changed yearly. Bees preliminary to the regional level mostly use the School Pronouncer's Guide which contains a collection of Spell It! words as well as surprise words not in Spell It! but in Scripps' official dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.

The regional bees are given a Sponsor Bee Guide by Scripps. There are two volumes, which each contain Spell It! words as well as surprise words. Bees need not use the words from Spell It! to be considered official.

Sponsors

To participate in the national competition, a speller must be sponsored. Scripps has 288 sponsors (mostly newspapers) from the U.S., Canada, Bahamas, New Zealand, and Europe covering a certain area and conducting their own regional spelling bees to send spellers to the national level.

National competition format

Round One

In the few years prior to 2008, Round One consisted of a 25-word multiple-choice written test. However, as of 2010, changes have been made in the formatting of this test. Now referred to as the Round One Test, it consists of 25 words, sometimes called "the written round. All spellers gather at the Maryland Ballroom by 8:00 am sharp. Jacques Bailly, the Bee's official pronouncer, pronounces each word, its language of origin, definition, and usage in a sentence. Spellers then are given a 30-second pause in which to write down their word with the 2 pens given to them, and then Dr. Bailly repeats the word and all information. Another 30-second pause, and then they move onto the next word.

Each correctly spelled word on the Round One written test is worth one point.

Round Two

Round Two is an oral round, in which spellers spell a word from Merriam Webster's Spellit! or the Rounds 2 & 3 study guide. Every speller participates and has a chance to take the stage. A correct oral spelling in Round Two is worth three points. If they miss their word, the head judge will NOT ring the bell, nor be escorted off stage. Instead, Dr. Bailly will offer the correct spelling, and the speller is expected to return to their seat.

Round Three

Round Three is an oral round. Every speller spells a word from either Spell It! (the official study booklet) or from a list of extra words released only to the spellers. Like Round Two, it is worth three points. The judges total scores from the first three rounds to determine scores. The maximum possible is 31. The top 50 spellers qualify for Round Four.

Round Four onward

Beginning in Round Four, each speller participates in a single-elimination oral round, where they receive one word to spell. A speller who spells incorrectly is eliminated; otherwise, they move on to the next round.

Round One and all rounds from Round Four until the end of the contest are dictionary rounds. Words are selected from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged and its addenda section, and words in these rounds may or may not be found on old published study lists.

The Consolidated Word List, published by Scripps, consists of all words used in the National Bee as far back as 1950, including various study lists published by Scripps since then. It is organized into three sections: Words Appearing Infrequently, Words Appearing with Moderate Frequency, and Word Appearing Frequently. Nearly 800 pages and 24,000 words long, the Consolidated Word List is intended for those who have already mastered the words in Spell It!. The Consolidated Word List is a helpful study aide for the Round One written test and Rounds Four-end of the National Bee, as well as for the "surprise" words in regional and local bees. The list can currently be found on the Scripps website at this link.

Remaining Rounds

Rounds continue until a champion is declared. If, at the end of a particular round, there is only one speller remaining, that speller must correctly spell one additional word to win. If they misspell the word, all spellers present at the beginning of the previous round return for another round. If there are two or three spellers remaining at the beginning of a round, the pronouncer moves to the Championship Words section of the word list. Spellers alternate spelling words from this list of 25 words until only one remains. However, if all 25 Championship Words are exhausted before a champion is declared, then all remaining spellers are declared co-champions.

Regulations of oral rounds

Before 2004, spellers were not asked to spell any word until the judges deemed that the word had been clearly pronounced and identified by the speller; only then would the judges force a speller to begin spelling. Starting in 2004, the Bee adopted new rules. A speller is given two minutes and thirty seconds from when a word is first pronounced to spell it completely. The first two minutes are Regular Time; the final thirty seconds are Finish Time. During this time limit, a speller is allowed to ask the pronouncer for the word's:

• Definition
• Part of speech
• Use in a sentence
• Language(s) of origin (not the complete etymology, though some spellers call the language(s) of origin the etymology)
• Alternate pronunciations
• Root (A speller may ask whether a word comes from a particular root word or word element, but s/he must specify that root's language of origin and definition.)

A chime signals that regular time has expired, and the judges inform the speller that Finish Time has begun. The speller may watch a clock counting down from thirty seconds; no timing devices are allowed onstage. During Finish Time, a speller may not make further requests to the pronouncer but rather must begin spelling the word. Any speller who exceeds the time limit is automatically eliminated; judges do not acknowledge letters spelled after the end of Finish Time. A speller is allowed to stop spelling a word and restart spelling, but if s/he changes the letters already said, the alteration counts as a misspelling and causes automatic elimination.

Recent spelling bees

Year	Competition details
2005	78th Competition
2006	79th Competition
2007	80th Competition
2008	81st Competition
2009	82nd Competition
2010	83rd Competition
2011	84th Competition

Champions and winning words

Main article: List of Scripps National Spelling Bee champions

Prizes

The winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee receives a $30,000 cash prize and an engraved loving cup trophy from Scripps, a $2,500 savings bond, a reference library from Merriam-Webster, $2,600 in reference works and a lifetime membership to Britannica Online Premium from Encyclopædia Britannica, $5,000 cash prize from the Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation, and an online course and a Nook eReader from K12 Inc.

All spellers receive Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged on CD-ROM from Merriam-Webster, the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, which is a $100 U.S. Savings Bond, and a cash prize from Scripps. These cash prizes are determined based on the round in which the speller is eliminated. They range from $100 for a speller eliminated before the Quarterfinals to $12,500 for the second place finisher.

Publicity

In film

Documentary

The 2002 Academy Award-nominated documentary Spellbound follows eight competitors, including eventual national winner Nupur Lala, through the 1999 competition.

Fiction

The 2005 film Bee Season, based on Myla Goldberg's novel, follows a young girl's journey through various levels of spelling bee competition to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, as did the film Akeelah and the Bee the following year. Contestants in the Broadway show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are competing for a spot in the National Spelling Bee. The 2007 novel Spelldown by Karon Luddy is a fictional account of a South Carolina girl's journey from the Shirley County spelling championships to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Nonfiction

The book American Bee, by James Maguire, profiles 5 spellers who made it to the final rounds of the competition: Samir Patel, Katharine Close, Aliya Deri, Jamie Ding, and Marshall Winchester, as well as giving an overview of the history of the bee.^[6]

References

1. ^ Fox, Margalit (2011-03-22). "Frank Neuhauser, a Speller’s Speller, Dies at 97". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23neuhauser.html?_r=1. Retrieved 2011-04-03. 
2. ^ Brown, Emma (2011-03-21). "Frank Neuhauser, winner of first national spelling bee, dies at 97". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/frank-neuhauser-winner-of-first-national-spelling-bee-dies-at-97/2011/03/21/AB9J9BAB_story.html. Retrieved 2011-04-03. 
3. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary
4. ^ What is the origin of the term spelling bee?
5. ^ Spell It!
6. ^ Bruno, Debra (2006-05-28). "Word Nerds: Superbright youngsters who vie to make the best-speller list". Chicago Sun Times. 

Further reading

• Gormley, Amelia. Verbomania: Experiencing the National Spelling Bee
• Maguire, James. American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds

External links

• Official website of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
• 2008 Spelling Bee Press Release
• Final rounds of 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee to be broadcast live on ABC during primetime (press release)

Related media sites

• When Spelling Bee Champs Grow Up on Time.com (a division of Time Magazine)