Students stung by revamped National Spelling Bee format
OXON HILL, Md. — One speller ran off the stage in the middle of her time at the microphone, saying she needed to go to the bathroom. During one particularly brutal stretch, 10 consecutive spellers heard the bell that signals elimination.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee used to begin with a handshake. Now it starts with a slap to the face.
Leaner and meaner in its post-pandemic iteration, the bee returned to its usual venue 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 prelims is no joke. Every stage of the bee is so important,” said Dhroov Bharatia, a 13-year-old from Plano, Texas, who finished fourth last year.
In years past, the early onstage spelling rounds did little beyond weeding out the weakest or most nervous spellers. The real action was a written test that determined who would reach the semifinals.
But 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. Well over half the spellers who competed by midafternoon Tuesday were eliminated.
Spellers had to get through three words in one turn at the microphone to advance to Wednesday’s quarterfinals. First, they were given a word from a provided list of 4,000 — more than twice as many as in years past. Then they had to answer a multiple-choice vocabulary question about a word on the same list. Finally, they had to spell a word that could be found anywhere in Webster’s
Unabridged dictionary.
Annie-lois Acheamong, one of three spellers from Ghana, didn’t get that far. 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 with the 13-year-old eighth grader.
After asking for permission to use the bathroom, 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.
The judges let Annie-lois return to the microphone after the day’s last scheduled speller. 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.
There is precedent for pausing the clock during what Brooks called “extenuating circumstances,” notably in 2004 when Akshay Buddiga fainted on stage but finished in second
place.
Braydon Syx, 13, 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.
The seventh grader took his first plane ride to the bee.
Braydon’s first word was “ormolu” — a gold-colored alloy of copper, zinc and sometimes tin. He spelled out “O-R-M” and then took a long pause before spitting out the final three letters. 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.
Then came “bromegrass” — any grass of a large genus of grasses native to temperate regions. Something about the word was bothering him.
“Can you say it again?” he asked.
“Can you say it again another time?” He took a deep breath and asked again.
Braydon, who will compete Wednesday, explained his dilemma: “On ‘bromegrass,’ I didn’t know whether he was pronouncing it with an ‘m’ or an ‘n.’ ”