Initial rounds of National Spelling Bee get tough

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. Another tried to walk back to her seat after spelling her first word correctly, only to be reminded she had a vocabulary word next. 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 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 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 make the cut for 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. Eighty-eight of those spellers advanced to Wednesday's quarterfinals, a success rate of 38%.

Spellers had to get through three words in one turn at the microphone to continue in the bee. 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.