Friday, June 4, 2010

BRING. IT. ON. : Tonight. Prime Time. One of these kids is gonna win the whole thing. Our finalists are: Laura Newcombe, Lanson Tang, Adrian Gunawan, Elizabeth Platz, Shantanu Srivatsa, Annamika Veeramani, Joanna Ye, Julianna Canabal-Rodriguez, Aditya Chemudupaty and Andrew Grose. I'm going to spend the next hour getting to know as much as I can about them and their prospects and then I'll get back to you. And when the Bee gets its page going, you can read about them here. Thoughts?

UPDATE: read the comments in this thread for official rules on whether these kids are finalists or semifinalists. However, on ESPN, they did officially refer to them as finalists.

Here are the official rules (reposting them here):
"The semifinals consist of rounds of oral spelling and will likely be concurrent with the competition's live broadcast on ESPN on Friday, June 4. If the ESPN broadcast concludes during a semifinal round, spellers who have not spelled in the round will advance to the championship finals for the conclusion of the last semifinals round.

The championship finals consist of rounds of oral spelling and are concurrent with the competition's live broadcast on ABC on Friday, June 4, unless the ABC broadcast begins in a round that began during the semifinals. The championship finals will not officially commence until the last semifinals round has concluded, and prizes will be awarded accordingly."
I smell scandal...

Updated: I went back to review tape. Mary Brooks HEAD JUDGE OF THE BEE said these words: "All of you that are on stage are championship finalists for the ABC Broadcast." Hmm...

12 comments:

  1. Marsha2:15 PM

    Just to move it into this thread: these are not your finalists (well, the first four of them will be):

    <span>The official rules:  
     
    "The semifinals consist of rounds of oral spelling and will likely be concurrent with the competition's live broadcast on ESPN on Friday, June 4. If the ESPN broadcast concludes during a semifinal round, spellers who have not spelled in the round will advance to the championship finals for the conclusion of the last semifinals round.  
     
    The championship finals consist of rounds of oral spelling and are concurrent with the competition's live broadcast on ABC on Friday, June 4, unless the ABC broadcast begins in a round that began during the semifinals. The championship finals will not officially commence until the last semifinals round has concluded, and prizes will be awarded accordingly."  
     
    Plain meaning - tonight's broadcast will include both the semifinals and the finals. We start with the end of Round 6 - semifinals. Round 7 will begin the finals. So we do not yet know which of the latter 6 will be finalists.
    </span>

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  2. @Marsha: while your plain meaning is correct, it doesn't look like it's what the Bee is adhering to. They've automatically named the remaining spellers from Round 6 championship finalists.

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  3. Agreed.  I have only a minor issue with pausing and resuming the round (that fame/glory are not equally apportioned), but a real problem with labeling kids as "championship finalists" who have not completed the same number of rounds.

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  4. Vanessa H.2:50 PM

    I just went over to the Bee page linked above. It says "Championship Finalists" and lists all the remaining spellers.

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  5. Apparently, we are also going to be subjected to a Shaq v. Kavya "spell-off" during this evening's broadcast as cross promotion for the upcoming "Shaq vs." series this summer.  This is almost as dumb as the V countdown clock.

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  6. Anonymous3:18 PM

    I suppose it can't be worse than some of Dr. Bailly's sentences.

    I propose that each speller be allowed to ask "please do NOT use that word in a sentence, at least not unless you're going to be serious."

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  7. Speller093:25 PM

    I don't think the whole National Bee process will ever be "fair". Many kids get to Nationals just by memorizing the Spell-It book, since so many bees never go offlist. And the words at those qualifying bees were identical to last year's. No new words to study.

    Some spellers who have their regionals in March have found or have been given the offlist words before they get to the regionals.
    There was at least one participant in the semis today who qualified for the Nationals after winning only one bee, while others have to win classroom, school, district/county, and/or regional and state to get there.

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  8. Does the computerized job not do a fair enough job of sifting out who belongs there on day two?  Should it be harder?

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  9. Marsha3:42 PM

    Ditto. Pausing a round isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Fame and glory are already out of whack - I mean, Vanya got interviewed live today when she wasn't even a semi-finalist! But to have 6 kids named finalists without getting through a round that felled many, many other competitors just because they want ten kids on TV is shockingly unfair. ESPECIALLY as it contravenes their own rules, which expressly deal with just this situation.

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  10. Marsha3:48 PM

    The plot thickens - the official Bee feed is going back and forth between calling them "finalists" and "remaining spellers."

     - Finalists are weighing in on who will win in Shaq v Kavya during the Finalists press conference.
     - The remaining spellers gather for a press conference after the conclusion of the ESPN broadcast
     - The Championship Finalists celebrate, looking forward to tonight's final rounds.

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  11. Speller095:19 PM

    I like the written test. i was speaking more to the fairness of qualifying for the Nationals .

     Rami Hathwar missed an offlist word in a hard fought battle in the regionals. He's such a smart little speller who most likely didn't search for regional offlist words on the internet and isn't lucky enough to live where all one needs to do is memorize Spell-It words. He did score a perfect 25 on last year's written test. Hopefully next year...

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  12. Jennifer J.6:32 PM

    I do not like these "hip", ridiculously silly new sentences. This is serious Word Nerd business people!

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