Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A-N-T-I-C-I-P-A-T-I-O-N: We should talk a bit about how the Bee actually works tomorrow. Here are the Rules.

The 286 spellers first will participate in a 25-word multiple-choice, written round with words of increasing difficulty like this. Then everybody has one turn at the microphone with a pretty damn hard word. The kids receive one point for each written word correct, plus three points if they get the oral word correctly for a maximum potential of 28 points. The 90 kids with the highest scores (and then including all those tied with whoever's in 90th) continue to the rest of the competition, which according to Sean Mussenden last year required a score of 21.

That's where the part of the competition that's most familiar kicks in. Single elimination, at the microphone, increasing difficulty each round (though round 3 is actually pretty easy by Bee standards.) They'll do a round or two of that on Wednesday, and continue Thursday morning until a round ends with around 10 kids, at which point they'll shut things down until prime time.

What can the kids ask of Dr. Jacque Bailly? Definition, sentence, part of speech, language(s) of origin, and alternate pronunciation(s). "If the speller wishes to ask if the dictionary lists a specific root word as the root of the word to be spelled, the speller must specify a pronunciation of the root (not a spelling), its language, and its definition." There are time constraints, and a speller can be disqualified for a variety of reasons, including not starting to spell when it's time, engaging in unsportsmanlike conduct, or someone "who, in the process of spelling, utters unintelligible or nonsense sounds."

[We'll be running a pool again this year, with the rules the same as last year. It'll open tomorrow afternoon and close at noon on Thursday.]

We'll go over the rules for the ending later, but I wanted to say a word about why we do this every year: it's because these are great kids who deserve praise and public attention, and they worked their asses off to get to D.C. The best way we can show respect for what they do is to take it seriously -- with a sense of humor, of course -- but always standing in awe of the fact that they can do something at age 10-14 that we can't do now ourselves as grownups.

Back in 2005, we rooted for South Carolina's Morgan Foster Gilliam, then the youngest entrant at age 9, and swore she'd be back some day. So did her mom, commenting here. Now, two years later, she has returned to the Finals, and I'm glad to see her mom has kept her sane:
The spelling bee semi-finals will be on ESPN on Thursday morning. The finals will be on ABC Thursday night at 8pm. I hope to see Morgan reach both levels, but honestly, I’m not sure she has studied enough for that. She has so much going on in her life and spelling bees are just one part of it. The kids I have seen as finalists eat, sleep, and breathe spelling. Morgan is brilliant but gets to the level she is at mainly through sheer brain power and not from studying. So, we’ll see what happens. I’m not sure that I would want her to be a speller robot anyway.
Robots aren't fun; kids are fun. The written round begins Wednesday at 8am.

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