Can You Spell B-e-e?

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a highly competitive annual spelling bee in the US, with participants from other countries as well.  Over the years , the competition has been opened to contestants from Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, New Zealand, Guam, Ghana, Germany, South Korea,  the Bahamas, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.  However, they 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.

The Bee was formed in 1925.  It is held in late May and/or early June of each year.  It is open to students who have not yet completed eighth grade, reached their 15th birthday, nor won a previous National Spelling Bee.  Its goal is educational: to both encourage children to perfect the art of spelling and to also help enlarge their vocabularies while widening their knowledge of the English language.  

The Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational promotion with 288 sponsors in the US, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.  To participate in the national competition, a speller must be sponsored. There are four rounds to the bee.  If there is no winner at this time then the Championship Words  section of the word list is used.  This list is comprised of 25 words.  Spellers alternate spelling words from this list until only one speller remains.  If all words are exhausted before a champion is declared, then all remaining spellers are declared co-champions.

This year fourteen-year-old Sukanya Roy of South Abington Township, PA has won the 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee.  She took the title with her winning word cymotrichous (seye-MAH-trah-kuhs), which means wavy hair.  Sukanya gets more than $40,000 in cash and prizes.  She becomes the fourth consecutive Indian-American to win the bee and the ninth in the last 13 years.  The nationally televised bee lasted more than three hours.  Twelve-year-old Laura Newcombe of Toronto finished second.  She was trying to become the first Canadian to win the bee.