06/01/2006 Scrips Spelling Bee ABC

Jersey Girl

 

The Canadian girl, Finola, and the Jersey girl, Katherine, went through several rounds easily, and then Finola got one wrong, so Katherine spelled two words correctly to win.

It was a great competition.

The winning word was ursprache.

 

I used to be a halfway decent speller, won my school district's competition, but those kids make me feel like a total dumbass. I think "wehrmacht" was the only word in prime time I'd ever heard before.

 

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Yeah, I went to the state competition in the fourth grade, and I've always been a good speller, but I was closing my eyes and trying to spell those words, and I only got about 25-30% of them correct.

Of course, they studied endlessly, and I...didn't.

 

On the news the anchor said something like, "there were only about 10 words left when the girl from New Jersey pulled it out". What does that mean? If there a limited amount of words they use for the competition? Would it be a tie if they "ran out of words"? I know near the end they go to something called "championship words" or something like that, but I never heard of a word limit.

 

Once it got down to three kids, they went to the 25 word Championship word list. When there were no more words left, they call it a tie.

 

From the Contest Rules of the 78th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

At the beginning of any round in which either two or three spellers remain, the pronouncer shall move to the Championship Words section of the word list. The Championship Words section contains 25 words. If a champion does not emerge in the course of administering these final 25 words, the remaining spellers shall be declared co-champions. In the event that a round beginning with more than either two or three spellers ends with only one speller to begin the next and perhaps final round, the pronouncer shall not move to the Championship Words section at that point in the competition. Any speller remaining in the competition at the time the Championship Words are administered shall be subject to all aspects of Rule 11 except Abbreviated Regular Time, even if the speller was subject to Abbreviated Regular Time at an earlier point in the competition.

 

I didn't know this was being televised live. Darn it. Wish the network had publicized that a little so I could have watched.

 

Yes, it was live for the first time, and it went over the scheduled time. The last word was spelled at about 10:12.

I saw more publicity on both parts of the coverage on ESPN, which I'm pretty well watching live for ten hours a day, due to the French Open.

 

They had the LIVE icon on the screen for most of the 2:12 last night. Why would ABC lie about that??

 

You bet it was live. I forgot to @$%#'ing pad it and missed the end when it came down to the last two girls!!!

I don't know about the network, but the Bee itself seemed to have it's own particular idea about marketing itself. A day or two before the live broadcast I heard two separate stories on NPR about it. What's interesting is they were both interviews with the director of the Bee who was a champ from 20-25 years ago. She said she thought today she would be creamed if she participated -- it is much more competitive.

 

abc did the spelling bee in HD and not the indy 500.

yup my tivo cut it at 9pm as scheduled, this is certainly a program you would think they tape and then edit for time, even with the 25 word championship limit.

it was reported the winner got something like $40K, so good reason to be more competitive.

abcnews website had two major mistakes reporting it. they had the runnerups last name wrong and they also had the word wrong that saryn hooks was eliminated and then reinstated for.

 

Absolutely. It's amazing how much more competitive and difficult it's become in recent years.

The official site has a list of all winners and the winning words and it's pretty funny that not all that long ago the winners won with words like LUGE and MILIEU. Contrast that to the unbelievably difficult and obscure words from the past few years.

The current director Paige Kimble won in 1981 with SARCOPHAGUS.

 

Some of those winning words are amazing: knack, initials, and therapy?????

 

I am pretty sure they are re-running this on ESPN a couple times if anyone still wants to see it.

 

Although it wouldn't be a word in the spelling bee, I'm surprised no one has corrected the title:

S-C-R-I-P-P-S