Spelling bee’s word slingers aim to avoid a t-i-e

Record 291 contestants in national competition

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is back this week for its 90th year, with its youngest speller ever, its largestever field of contestants and new rules designed to prevent the annual competition from ending in a tie for the fourth year in a row.

A record 291 spellers will compete in this year’s bee, which kicked off Tuesday. The winner will be crowned Thursday night.

The contest is a high-pressure endurance test as much as a nerd spelling match. Spellers spend months preparing themselves mentally — and in some cases, physically — for the challenge of deconstructing tongue-twisters like “gesellschaft” and “Feldenkrais” one letter at a time.

The 2012 champ, Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego, was so confident going into the bee that she wrote her victory speech in advance and kept it folded in her pocket throughout the contest. The 2013 winner, the slightly built Arvind Mahankali of New York City, worried that he wasn’t strong enough to lift the championship trophy over his head for everyone to see, so he pumped iron for weeks. The gym time paid off. He clinched the contest by acing the Yiddish word “knaidel,” then easi- ly hoisted the winner’s cup.

The bee’s new rules may — or may not — prevent another tie.

All finalists left standing on the last night of the competition will be given a tiebreaker written test with 12 words and 12 vocabulary questions. If two or three spellers remain on stage at the end of 25 rounds, the speller with the highest score on the tiebreaker will be declared national champion.

If there’s a tie on the tiebreaker, the spellers with the highest scores will be declared the winners.

The winner — or winners — take home $40,000 in cash, a trophy and other prizes.