With vocabulary more important than ever, National Spelling Bee requires different prep
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Navneeth Murali would strongly prefer for the Scripps National Spelling Bee to get rid of the onstage, multiple-choice vocabulary questions that were introduced to the competition two years ago. “It's sort of hit or miss, the onstage vocab format, and it's sort of brutal in my opinion,” the 17-year-old former speller said. The vocabulary questions are part of a series of changes to the post-pandemic bee, which is leaner and, in some ways, meaner.
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Navneeth Murali would strongly prefer for the Scripps National Spelling Bee to get rid of the onstage, multiple-choice vocabulary questions that were introduced to the competition two years ago.
“It's sort of hit or miss, the onstage vocab format, and it's sort of brutal in my opinion,” the 17-year-old former speller said.
During their initial appearances onstage Tuesday at a convention center outside Washington, spellers were asked to spell one word and define another, both from a list provided in advance. Of the 229 spellers, 57 were ousted for misspelling (24.9%), while 33 of the 172 who spelled their first word correctly (19.2%) got vocabulary answers wrong.
The way Navneeth sees it, the SAT-style vocabulary questions are here to stay, and there's no excuse for spellers not to be prepared.
“Last year, I did miss on a vocabulary word, and it felt like it was the type of vocabulary word I should have known,” said 13-year-old Shradha Rachamreddy of San Jose, California, one of Navneeth's pupils. “They're not obscure. It's a mix of general knowledge and specific speller knowledge.”
During Navneeth's time as a speller, vocabulary was only part of a written test that also included spelling. It was important — the test score determined who made the semifinals — but the stakes weren't as high. Spellers could get a few definitions wrong and still make it through.
“Since the stakes are much higher, it's not something you can wing,” Navneeth said. “It's something that you need to prepare for and practice and get used to. Because I've placed an emphasis on it from the beginning of the next season, I feel that it's something my students are primed for.”
SURPRISING ABSENCE
Vikram, last year's runner-up, took eventual champion Harini all the way to a “spell-off” — Scripps' term for its lightning-round tiebreaker. He looked forward to returning this year as an eighth-grader, the last school year in which spellers are eligible.
Instead, Vikram was bounced in his regional bee in Denver, which lasted 53 rounds over a span of more than five hours. Vikram and his parents argued that he misspelled because the bee's pronouncer made one of several mistakes, but their appeal was unsuccessful.
“The bee went so deep off-list, there were several words that Vikram had to actually anticipate what the word might be based on the language or the definition,” said his mother, Sandhya Ayyar. “After these several rounds, he reached a point where, ‘I don’t know what's the word or what I'm supposed to spell here.'”
In 2018 or 2019, Vikram still could have gone to nationals, because Scripps had a wild-card program meant to ensure that spellers from highly competitive regions had a chance to compete on the biggest stage. However, the program was open to spellers of widely varying abilities as long as their families were able to pay their way, and the 2019 bee swelled to more than 500 competitors, some of whom clearly didn't belong.
Scripps had planned to curtail the wild cards in 2020, making them available only to eighth-graders like Vikram who had previously competed at nationals. But that bee was canceled because of the pandemic, and in 2021, Scripps got rid of the wild cards altogether. Ayyar's request to Scripps to bring them back this year was rebuffed.
Corrie Loeffler, the bee's executive director, wouldn't rule out creating a new qualifying system in the future, but she declined to change this year's competition rules retroactively.
“We heard from a handful of people, and it's a tough thing,” Loeffler said. “You're talking about kids who have worked really hard and want the opportunity to show off what they've worked for, and that's something we don't take lightly, but we also take the rules of our competition very seriously.
“I feel for Vikram very strongly, especially as a former speller. I told his parents that; I told him that. He has so much to be proud of. That spell-off from last year, nobody is going to forget that.”
UNAVOIDABLE ABSENCE
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