‘Bloodbath’: Hyped Bee contenders see hopes dashed on spelling’s saddest day | National Spelling Bee

UAchyut Ethiraj’s last appearance at Scripps National Spelling Bee ended much sooner than he expected, the 14-year-old grimaced at the microphone, quietly stepped off the stage and exited the ballroom with his mother’s arm wrapped around his back.

Achyut had plenty of company among more than 100 spelling bees eliminated on Wednesday, the saddest day for spelling bees.

“I didn’t expect to get away with it, but I did, and I guess now I have to accept the truth,” said Ahyut, an eighth-grader from Fort Wayne, Indiana. “I’m happy to graduate from high school and do other things, but I’m a little confused about what to do now that I’m done with spelling.”

“It’s my senior year and I expected to do better, but I guess it is what it is,” he said. “And I have to move on.”

The structure of the spelling bee has undergone many changes over time, but in the past three years under Executive Director Corrie Loeffler, the competition has gotten very tough, very fast for the spellers who make it through the preliminary rounds.

A quick guide

96th Scripps National Spelling Bee

show

How to watch

All times are Eastern.

Tuesday, May 28 Preliminary meetings from 8:00 to 19:40 (ION Plus, spellingbee.com)

Wednesday, May 29 Quarterfinals from 8:00 to 12:45 (ION Plus, spellingbee.com)

Wednesday, May 29 Semi-finals from 14:30 to 18:30 (ION Plus, spellingbee.com)

Thursday, May 30 Finals from 20:00 to 22:00 (ION)

The morning began with 148 spellers on stage. By the end of the first quarter-final round, there were 59 left, and 46 of them made it through the vocabulary round to reach the semi-finals. The plan was to narrow the field down to about a dozen finalists by the end of the day. The finals are Thursday night, with the winner receiving a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.

Beginning with the quarterfinals, the bee’s word panel can use any of the more than half a million words in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, plus some geographic names not even listed in this volume. Although the panel tries to maintain a constant level of difficulty, it can vary from word to word.

Then luck comes into play.

Achyut was asked to write the word “sistine”. Derived from the Sistine Chapel, it is an adjective meaning “light blue color.” He went with “cistine,” and his trainer, Grace Walters, had second thoughts.

“I’m sure when I was making my lists, I just assumed, ‘Oh, everyone knows the Sistine Chapel.'” But the reality is, these kids are between 10 and 14 years old. They may not have … the cultural knowledge that us older people have,” said Walters, 22, a former speller. “So that’s definitely something I feel like I’ve overlooked in helping him prepare.”

Two years ago, Achyut finished tied for 14th, and last year tied for 23rd. This year, he tied with another speller for 60th place, along with the other 89 eliminated in the round.

“My rank is going down. But the reality is that my preparation is increasing a lot,” Ahyut said. “I don’t know how that matches either, but I know I know the words and I deserve a good rest.”

He has a lot of company. Spellers who set high expectations for themselves based on past performance often fall short. Rare is a speller like Vanya Shivashankar, who emerged with a huge splash in 2015 after years of strong finishes and eventually won the trophy. Even Shivashankar had a setback the previous year when a written spelling and vocabulary test left her out of the final.

Naisa Modi, 2018 runner-up, did not reach the final the following year. Ishika Varipili, who had hoped to qualify for the trophy this year in her third and final attempt, bowed out in a tie for 47th after missing a vocabulary word, ‘superb’, and said afterwards that she was ‘trying to keep it’. .

“These kids put a lot of pressure on themselves. I think they are getting nervous. They are worried. They focus more on “What if I fail? What if that happens? What if that happens?” Walters said. “Kids feel around them that they’re looked at as past finalists, past semi-finalists, and they realize that people expect something from them.”

Aliyah Alpert, who finished ninth in 2022, missed the bee entirely last year because she missed the word “recovery” in the Yavapai County spelling bee in her home state of Arizona.

“It was on the list, I totally knew the word, but I gave it up. Suffocated,” said 13-year-old Aaliyah, who returned this year.

Matthew Bader came in knowing he might not improve on his finish last year, a tie for 57th.

“The further you get in the race one year, the more likely you are to do worse the next year,” said Matthew, a 14-year-old from Peachtree City, Georgia. “I actually didn’t mind going out. Win or lose, to be here, that’s a pretty big accomplishment.”

Anant Chepuri of Bradenton, Fla., felt his daughter, Amara, 11, was eliminated with one of the toughest words (“spectacular”) from what he called an inconsistent round. But he knew it was going to be tough before she even got to the microphone.

“It was brutal,” Chepuri said. “The first child, I felt very sorry for him. It was a bloodbath!”