List of Scripps National Spelling Bee champions

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a competition held annually in Washington, D.C. in the United States at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center over a two day period at the end of May or beginning of June. The spelling bee competition began in 1925, and was organized by The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky until the Scripps Howard Broadcasting Company assumed sponsorship in 1941. The media conglomerate, now known as the E. W. Scripps Company, has continued to sponsor the competition to this date. The competition was canceled from 1943 to 1945 due to World War II. Every speller in the competition has previously participated in a local spelling bee, usually organized by a local newspaper.^[1] Although the Bee is titled "National", spellers from Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have entered the competition. The competition has only been won by two people from outside the fifty U.S. states—the first time by a Puerto Rican in 1975, the second by a Jamaican in 1998.

The National Spelling Bee has been televised live in the United States since 1994 on ESPN, a Disney-owned cable television network dedicated to broadcasting and producing sports-related programming.^[2] Beginning in 2006, the ABC network, also owned by Disney, broadcast the final rounds over a live two-hour timeslot.^[2][3] In 2011, the final rounds returned to ESPN because of a scheduling conflict with the NBA Finals.

The National Spelling Bee is primarily an oral competition conducted in elimination rounds until only one speller remains. The first round consists of a 25-word written test, the remaining rounds are oral spelling tests. The competition has been declared a tie three times, in 1950, 1957 and 1962. As of 2011, forty-six champions have been girls, and forty-one have been boys.

Nine of the last thirteen winners (from 1999–2011) have been Indian Americans reflecting the recent dominance of students of this community in this competition.^[4] It is important to note here that Indian Americans make up less than 1% of the population of the USA. Sukanya Roy was the latest Indian-American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

List of champions

Notes

^A Although the Scripps National Spelling Bee website gives Dean Lucas' winning word as "luxuriance" and Virginia Hogan's winning word as "asceticism", two 1929 articles from Time magazine and The New York Times credit Virginia Hogan as winning the 1929 Bee with "luxuriance", so it is possible Dean Lucas' winning word is "asceticism".^[9][10]

^B Joint champions were announced after the contestants had exhausted the list of words.^[17]

^C Joint champions were announced after Sandra Owen was knocked out of the competition by spelling "xylophagus" as "xylophagous", with the judges later realizing that it was an acceptable spelling variant (though she still spelled the winning word, "schappe" incorrectly as "schaup").^[21]

^D Joint champions were announced.^[5]

^E Trinkle, Bailly, Pipkin, Giddens, and Thampy now serve as Scripps National Spelling Bee staff members.^[30]

^F Andrews is the author of A Champion's Guide to Success in Spelling Bees: Fundamentals of Spelling Bee Competition and Preparation (ISBN 978-1463689087, ISBN 1-4636-8908-X).^[68]

References

External links

• Official website of the Scripps National Spelling Bee