The post-pandemic bee is leaner and, in some ways, meaner.
Because of the vocabulary-definition rounds, accomplished spellers can be bounced from the bee without ever misspelling a word. And because there is no alternative path to the bee as there was in the late 2010s, the regional bees that spellers must win to qualify can be incredibly tense, and sometimes shocking.
Last year’s national runner-up, Vikram Raju, didn’t make it back in his final year of eligibility. The tweaks help ensure the bee, which concludes Thursday, finishes on schedule with a sole champion. That’s an important consideration after the eight-way tie of 2019. But some in the spelling community say they make the competition more dependent on luck and less about rewarding spellers for their years spent mastering roots and language patterns and exploring the farthest reaches of Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged dictionary. Speller-turned-coach Navneeth Murali would strongly prefer for the 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,” he said. Navneeth, a 17-year-old high school junior from Edison, New Jersey, had his last, best chance to win a national title wiped out by the pandemic in 2020, and he has since poured his energy into coaching. Along with another ex-speller-turned-guru, Grace Walters, he mentored last year’s champion, Harini Logan. Shradha Rachamreddy is one of Navneeth’s current pupils, and she has been drilling on vocabulary all year. “Last year, I did miss on a vocabulary word, and it felt like it was the type of vocabulary word I should have known,” she said. That word was dactylogram, which ended her 2022 national bee in Round 6. She defined it as signature; the correct answer is fingerprint. 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. Now, vocabulary rounds are sprinkled through the onstage competition, and if a speller gets one multiple-choice question wrong, they’re out. Vikram Raju, 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 of mistakes by the bee’s pronouncer, but their appeal was unsuccessful. 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 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. 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. “I feel for Vikram very strongly, especially as a former speller,” she said. “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.” Quarterfinals are scheduled for Wednesday, 5 to 10 a.m. Pacific time. Semifinals are Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m. Pacific, and finals in that same prime-time slot Thursday.
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