90th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee ~ May 31 & June 1, 2017

[Sylvia]

It's Bee week in the Washington, D.C., area again! http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/s...for-90th-annual-scripps-national-spelling-bee

Official site: http://spellingbee.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScrippsBee
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scrippsnationalspellingbee/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/scrippsnationalspellingbee
Snapchat (scrippsbee)

Preliminaries - Wednesday, May 31

Round 2
Spellers 1 - 145
8:00 - 10:00 a.m. ET ESPN3
Spellers 146 - 291
10:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. ET ESPN3

Round 3
Spellers 1 - 145
1:15 - 3:30 p.m. ET ESPN3
Spellers 146 - 291
3:45 - 6:00 p.m. ET ESPN3

Finals - Thursday, June 1

Part 1
10 a.m - 2 p.m. ET ESPN2

Part 2
8:30 - 10:30 p.m. ET ESPN

 

[quartz]

I love these kids! Will be setting my PVR.

 

[A.H.Black]

Thanks Sylvia. I have been missing things lately and wouldn't want to miss this.

I see the spellers are not numbered according to their state this year. I would how they were organized. I have no favorites this year and it looks like it will be very difficult to see a tie again. I notice there two spellers with the last name of Chen. Hmmm.

I will also have to take this year's test. I never do very well.

 

[BaileyCatts]

I just saw a 6 year old on the news spelling words that I can't even pronounce. Nuthin' like watching little kids who are smarter than you are! So I'll be watching!

 

[Simone411]

Thanks for info @Sylvia! Just autotuned for Thursday on ESPN and ESPN2.

 

[Ageless]

We just watched the final round of the National Geobee the other night. Those kids are amazing too. Not only do you have to know where every country, river, mountain range, etc is, but you have to know their religions, economies and more.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/bee/,

 

[Sylvia]

The youngest person ever to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee is Edith Fuller, of Tulsa, Oklahoma (qualified in March as a 5-year-old) - she is 6 now: http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/yea...ripps-national-spelling-bee/story?id=47728060
She is speller no. 290 of 291: http://spellingbee.com/blog/meet-edith-fuller-6-youngest-ever-bee-competitor

 

[A.H.Black]

Edith was great. Her only problem was there were too many hands to high-five on her way back to her seat. She also looked a little bit confused about where to put her placard after the competition was over. I'm sure someone was there to help her.

I now have about an hour's break to get my errands run. I missed the earliest spellers. ESPN3 doesn't have it on replay yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow

 

[Aceon6]

Round 3 is a bloodbath on common vocabulary words. I'm not that shocked as these might be familiar words that the kids didn't think they needed to review. I'm shocked that anyone from Burlington, ON doesn't know how to spell cannoli, then I noticed that the other contestant from the same area missed gluttony. Get these kids to a proper Italian pastry shop right now.

 

[Vagabond]

Leave the gun, spell take the cannoli.

 

[A.H.Black]

Round 3 is a bloodbath on common vocabulary words. I'm not that shocked as these might be familiar words that the kids didn't think they needed to review. I'm shocked that anyone from Burlington, ON doesn't know how to spell cannoli, then I noticed that the other contestant from the same area missed gluttony. Get these kids to a proper Italian pastry shop right now.

I kept thinking about all those words too. The best I can come up with is they just need more time and experience. Most of those words I know now because I have read them and used them. I'm not sure how many of those words I was familiar with when I was 14 years-old. Yes, they're spellers, but doesn't some of this have to come from experience?

 

[Japanfan]

Yes, they're spellers, but doesn't some of this have to come from experience?

I would think, but don't know how much.

I have a friend who plays Scrabble competitively, and she reads lists of words, including words in other languages that are allowed in Scrabble. She may not even know the meanings of those words.

I doubt that this friend has read actual book in 25 years. All she reads is those lists.

 

[Sylvia]

List of the 40 spellers who are this year's Finalists: http://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/2017finalists.pdf

ETA: http://spellingbee.com/blog

Primetime finalists (Thursday 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN)

The 15 spellers in the Finals are:

Speller 278 Shruthika Padhy

Speller 264 Ananya Vinay

Speller 259 Alex Iyer

Speller 254 Shourav Dasari

Speller 235 Rohan Rajeev

Speller 210 Naysa Modi

Speller 200 Raksheet Kota

Speller 191 Alice Liu

Speller 187 Saketh Sundar

Speller 167 Sreeniketh Vogoti

Speller 143 Tejas Muthusamy

Speller 114 Shrinidhi Gopal

Speller 75 Mira Dedhia

Speller 36 Erin Howard

Speller 27 Rohan Sachdev

 

[Simone411]

There's 14 remaining as of now. I wish them all the best!

 

[A.H.Black]

My favorite is Tejas. I remember him when he was little.

 

[Spareoom]

That's fascinating that there are so many kids who go out on "normal" words, but actually I think it's smart. You KNOW that these kids are memorizing whole books of crazy obscure words and that's what they spend their time on, but can they actually *spell* regular words? By keeping both kinds in the competition, it encourages the kids to become more well-rounded. At least that's the hope, lol.

 

[Debbie S]

These spellers are impressive! Cool that one of them is a 2nd generation (mom) Bee competitor.

 

[Sylvia]

It was a really impressive display by and exciting duel between Ananya and Rohan at the end!

By correctly spelling ‘marocain,’ California girl becomes bee queen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...07a9ce-46c5-11e7-b08b-1818ab401a7f_story.html

Back and forth they went, Rohan Rajeev and Ananya Vinay.
Some of the words they spelled: Heiligenschein. Durchkomponiert. Sceloporus.
One, or both of them, would be the new champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland. But late into the night Thursday, it still wasn’t clear who would win yet. By 11:30, though, confetti rained down and a champion emerged. Ananya had won on “marocain,” a fabric.

ETA link to the article in Ananya Vinay's hometown paper: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education/article153766644.html
Last year she finished 172nd in her first trip to the national competition.

 

[Buzz]

Those kids are so amazing! I can't even pronounce some of those words! LOL

 

[Vash01]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sixth-grader-wins-national-spelling-bee-n767416

I watched only the last part of this- the duel between Rohan and Ananya. I wish I could have watched the whole thing. These kids are so amazing! I didn't know most of the words they were spelling. Ananya looked so calm and confident throughout! It was just incredible to watch. I do remember seeing her in a past spelling bee. It must have been last year.

 

[A.H.Black]

It was a really impressive display by and exciting duel between Ananya and Rohan at the end!

By correctly spelling ‘marocain,’ California girl becomes bee queen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...07a9ce-46c5-11e7-b08b-1818ab401a7f_story.html

ETA link to the article in Ananya Vinay's hometown paper: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education/article153766644.html
Last year she finished 172nd in her first trip to the national competition.

I agree. It was very impressive - 90 minutes over the scheduled time. It wasn't just the final two. I thought we might have an all nighter once they got to the final 6 - and again with the final 4. Ananya was just so focused all night - no funny sentences for her.

 

[annie720]

Thanks for the links to remind me of this. We watched the final 5=> final 2, then stopped because dh wanted to watch the Amazing Race finale live. Truly remarkable contestants. I was glad to see that Ananya finally smiled.

 

[Meredith]

I fell asleep and missed the ending. Drat. That was fun to watch on so many levels.

 

[Vash01]

I agree. It was very impressive - 90 minutes over the scheduled time. It wasn't just the final two. I thought we might have an all nighter once they got to the final 6 - and again with the final 4. Ananya was just so focused all night - no funny sentences for her.

I was shocked when I heard that these kids had been competing since 10 am that day, that's 12 hours of intense competition. I don't know many adults that can have that kind of concentration and energy for that long.

 

[A.H.Black]

I was shocked when I heard that these kids had been competing since 10 am that day, that's 12 hours of intense competition. I don't know many adults that can have that kind of concentration and energy for that long.

There was a 4-8 hour break between the semi-finals and the finals (I don't remember exactly when the semi-finals ended). During that time the finalists did have to take an additional written test that would be used only in the event of a tie - don't know how long the test took. Also, I'm sure some of the finalists were asked to do a fluff/introduction piece for ESPN during that time as there was such a piece for all the finalists. ESPN had some of them already prepared but I'm sure they didn't have all 14 ready.

 

[MacMadame]

FiveThirtyEight weighs in with lots of numbers!

https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...ng-bee-so-hard/?ex_cid=newsletter-top-stories

 

[A.H.Black]

So I'm re-watching the semi-finals this evening (nice background to work.) One of the spellers favorite athletes is Yuzuru Hanyu.

 

[MacMadame]