Thursday, May 29, 2014

CO-CHAMPIONS: These two amazing young men, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe, truly could have gone all night. Having outlasted 279 of their colleagues, they went toe-to-toe, round after round, demonstrating their facility across every challenge the English language could provide. There was no reason to go past twenty-two rounds and the limits of the Championship Word List, because neither of these boys was better than the other tonight. Both were outstanding. All that would have happened, had this gone further, was one would have gotten lucky and the other, not—but neither would have been "better" in any meaningful sense.

Of course, that's the cruel trick of the Bee, isn't it? Depending on how the words were allotted, so many of them might have been able to pull that off tonight, including a few who didn't even make it to primetime. Their efforts were admirable, their enthusiasm palpable. We did not want to see any of them err.

After all the nonsense—artificial cutdowns imposed by a network that seems unable to adopt a singular tone of respect for the kids—we were left with two spellers not at war with each other, as Hathwar so eloquently stated, but with the dictionary. And the kids won. That's why we keep watching.

24 comments:

  1. I was only following on Twitter. Was the tie purely a function of timing, or was this a Bud Selig thing where they arbitrarily ended the match?

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  2. Two comments, both related to Ansun:


    1) Anecdotal reports suggest that the level of Texan pride in Colleyville (we border Euless) and the broader metroplex is currently considered "obnoxious" by anyone not from Texas. Whether that is statistically significant from normal circumstances is beyond my mathematical abilities to determine.

    2) I loved his tells - every time he got a word he knew, he'd make this expression that said "yes! I know that one!"

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  3. Devin McCullen12:56 AM

    Once it was down to 3 competitors, they switched to the 25 championship words. When there weren't enough left for either speller to win, the tie was declared.

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  4. Adam C.9:36 AM

    Just finished reading the CIL transcript from last night. Couldn't be there live, but stayed up late to watch, and THAT. WAS. AWESOME. So proud of the co-champs, so proud of all the competitors. Like others have said, I really really really hope that the Jacob clips we see in future bee coverage focus on his wonderful, genuine enthusiasm and not his momentary lapse *ahem, ESPN*.

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  5. bristlesage11:11 AM

    Have you guys already posted this somewhere in the comments? Anyway, it's fun, a test of 20 winning words from years past, including sentences/origin/parts of speech, if you "ask" for them.

    http://www.vox.com/2014/5/28/5740250/spell-it-out

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  6. Sara Miller1:59 PM

    They did, and they also showed the clip and made fun of it for several minutes on the ESPN2 show "Highly Questionable" yesterday. They need to stop.

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  7. Sara Miller2:03 PM

    Could someone explain to me what happened with Bailly's "milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" sentence last night? I heard everyone in the crowd sort of laugh or groan. It must have went over my head...

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  8. Anne572:04 PM

    Agreed. I kept shouting at the TV for them to get the cameras out of the kids faces after they left the stage.

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  9. Sara Miller2:08 PM

    Neat test, but I'm afraid it's far too easy for most posters here during Bee Week :).

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  10. Sara Miller2:10 PM

    I'm almost afraid to look at Youtube comments of videos of Jacob...Youtube commenters were vicious about Evan O'Dorney in '07.

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  11. Sara Miller2:17 PM

    I know! If he got a word he didn't know, his eyes would sort of droop, no smile. If he knew it, happy eyes and slight smile. We got the droopy eyes on "feuilleton" which really had me scared he didn't know it. Not sure if that was an act and he knew it or if he wasn't familiar with it and just managed to figure it out. What do you think?

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  12. Sara Miller2:22 PM

    I wonder why Scripps decided to start the championship words with 3 spellers remaining instead of only 2 (back whenever they first made the rule about the championship words)?

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  13. Sara Miller2:22 PM

    I wonder why Scripps decided to start the championship words with 3 spellers remaining instead of 2 (back whenever they first made the rule about the championship words)?

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  14. bristlesage2:24 PM

    Ha, I am sure that's true. It really does demonstrate how the difficulty has ramped up over time, though.

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  15. Charles2:34 PM

    I'm just guessing here, but it could be that they wanted to wrap up the competition relatively quickly, since it was past 10:00 and preempting other ESPN shows. Of course, the co-champs dispensed with any notion of immediately ending the contest!

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  16. Dave S2:43 PM

    Shucks. I must have skipped over it.

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  17. That's a long-standing Scripps rule (Bee Rule 4) http://www.spellingbee.com/contest-rules It was not added at the behest of TV. Basically, it's designed so that they don't run out of words. Dr. Bailly isn't coming up with/pronouncing these words off the top of his head.

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  18. Adam C.3:25 PM

    That's disappointing, but jerks gonna be jerks. ESPN, theoretically, has some editorial standards it can use.

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  19. Sara Miller4:14 PM

    Yeah, but I wonder why the rule was originally made to start the championship words with "any round where 2 or 3 spellers" remain instead of just 2?

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  20. BeeFan6:36 PM

    I doubt that it was anything more than that seemed a small enough number that a champion was imminent.

    I think they did that in 1998 or 1999.

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  21. Marsha10:43 PM

    It was hard to tell, but it seemed that he started to read it, but it was the sentence for the wrong word. At least that's what he said, but there may have some kind of inside joke that I missed completely.

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  22. Sara Miller10:21 AM

    BeeFan, do you know of any good regional bees that live stream their bee or post it on Youtube? I know the Houston bee (Syamantak & Shobha this year) is really good and live streams every year.

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  23. BeeFan11:33 AM

    Sounds like you know one more than I do. Maybe I should go looking for more.
    I remember watching a podcast of the Detroit regional one year. Not live, though.
    The only live streaming I ever watched was Canspell in its first few years.

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  24. To answer the question in the chat room about cruelness of post-video interviews:
    I was on site in the media section doing coverage of Tejas (8th place) and I think these people were excited to be on TV. They also had the opportunity to say yes or no for the interviews and ESPN was very respectful. Kaylee was very generous to the subjects. They didn't do the 11th place winner (also from Virginia) because he ran away pretty fast

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