She stood silently, looking miserable, after she was given three potential definitions for the word “bandicoot.” She made a guess - “A?” - before she was told she had to read the multiple-choice answer under that letter, which was wrong.Īkira returned to the audience and buried her head in her mother’s shoulder. “Akira, we need you for your word meaning round,” a judge told her. The eighth grader from a Department of Defense middle school in Stuttgart, Germany, began by spelling “rednigote” correctly, then turned around and headed for her seat. Still, through some combination of hard work, luck and perseverance, Braydon will spell again on Wednesday.Īkira Harris won’t be so fortunate. “Can you say it one more time?”Īfterward, Braydon explained his dilemma: “On ‘bromegrass,’ I didn’t know whether he was pronouncing it with an ‘m’ or an ‘n.’” Something about the word was bothering him. Then came “bromegrass” - any grass of a large genus of grasses native to temperate regions. “It was really scary,” Braydon said, “but I also felt really happy at the same time. He stretched his arms out to his sides after identifying the definition of the word “tremulous” - not a bad description of his demeanor at the microphone. He spelled out “O-R-M” and then took a long, excruciating pause before spitting out the final three letters. Braydon’s first word was “ormolu” - a gold-colored alloy of copper, zinc and sometimes tin. The 13-year-old seventh grader took his first plane ride to compete in this year’s bee. READ MORE: Scripps National Spelling Bee names 8 champions in historic tieīraydon Syx of West Blocton, Alabama, might not get that far, but his time in front of the microphone on Tuesday encapsulated the newly riveting drama of the early rounds.
There is precedent for pausing the clock during what Brooks called “extenuating circumstances,” notably in 2004 when Akshay Buddiga fainted on stage but recovered to finish in second place. Although she could have been eliminated for exceeding the 30-second time limit for the vocabulary question, Brooks said the speller’s clock was paused because she was experiencing a legitimate emergency. The judges ultimately decided to let Annie-Lois return to the microphone after the day’s last scheduled speller. “That was a first,” head judge Mary Brooks, who’s been involved with the bee for 50 years, said later.
SPELLING BEE WORDS HOW TO
She scurried off the stage before she got an answer from the stunned judges, who paused the competition and conferred about how to handle the situation. “I think I’m going to pee myself,” the 13-year-old eighth grader said. She labored successfully through her first word, “coulrophobia” - fear of clowns - and then was asked to define “edamame.” She smiled initially, but when she crossed her legs and couldn’t stand still, it was clear something else was going on. Finally, they had to spell a word that could be found anywhere in Webster’s Unabridged dictionary.Īnnie-Lois Acheamong, one of three spellers from Ghana, didn’t get that far. Then, they had to answer a multiple-choice vocabulary question about a word on the same list. First, they were given a word from a provided list of 4,000 - more than twice as many as in years past. Spellers had to get through three words in one turn at the microphone to advance to Wednesday’s quarterfinals.
Well over half the spellers who competed by midafternoon Tuesday were eliminated. The real action was a written test that determined who would make the cut for the semifinals.īut during last year’s mostly virtual bee, the bee’s new executive director eliminated the test, and that structure continued as 229 spellers took the stage for this year’s fully-in-person competition. In years past, the early onstage spelling rounds did little beyond weeding out the weakest or most nervous spellers. READ MORE: Zaila Avant-garde wins Scripps National Spelling Bee Every stage of the bee is so important,” said Dhroov Bharatia, a 13-year-old from Plano, Texas, who finished fourth last year. Leaner and meaner in its post-pandemic iteration, the bee returned to its usual venue on Tuesday for the first time in three years, and spellers were greeted with a new preliminary-round format that gave them no time to get comfortable. The Scripps National Spelling Bee used to begin with a handshake. During one particularly brutal stretch, 10 consecutive spellers heard the bell that signals elimination. Another tried to walk back to her seat after spelling her first word correctly, only to be reminded she had a vocabulary word next. (AP) - One speller ran off the stage in the middle of her time at the microphone, saying she needed to pee.