His students have been working on it for a full year, and he also wrote a book, “Defining Success,” intended to help spellers prepare for the vocabulary portion. Yet Navneeth still observes spellers treating vocabulary as an afterthought in their preparation. Now, vocabulary rounds are sprinkled through the onstage competition, and if a speller gets one multiple-choice question wrong, they’re out. Spellers could get a few definitions wrong and still make it through. It was important - the test score determined who made the semifinals - but the stakes weren’t as high. It’s a mix of general knowledge and specific speller knowledge.”ĭuring Navneeth’s time as a speller, vocabulary was only part of a written test that also included spelling. “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. 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. Along with another ex-speller-turned-guru, Grace Walters, he mentored last year’s champion, Harini Logan. Navneeth, a 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. “Scripps has done a good job of evolving and not staying fixed in place, even if some of the particular choices they make, I would not myself have made if I were in their shoes,” said Scott Remer, a former speller, study guide author and coach who is tutoring 29 competitors in this year’s bee. 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. 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.ĭuring 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. That’s an important consideration after the eight-way tie of 2019. The tweaks help ensure the bee, which began Tuesday with the preliminary rounds and concludes Thursday, finishes on schedule with a sole champion. Last year’s national runner-up, Vikram Raju, didn’t make it back in his final year of eligibility. And because there is no alternative path to the bee as there was in the late 2010s, the regional bees spellers must win to qualify can be incredibly tense, and sometimes shocking. Accomplished spellers can be bounced from the bee without ever misspelling a word.
#Scripps spelling bee 2021 series
The vocabulary questions are part of a series of changes to the post-pandemic bee, which is leaner and, in some ways, meaner. “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.
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