Rosie Simon. Photo by Ross Den Otter.
Considered an American invention, spelling bees happen in countries all over the world including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia!
The United States National Spelling Bee was started in 1925 by The Courier-Journal, the newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky. In 1941, the Scripps Howard News Service acquired sponsorship of the program, and the name changed to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee — commonly referred to as “Scripps National Spelling Bee”–one of the most famous bees in the world!
The Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound followed 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee championship in Washington, DC. The pressure these amazing kids are able to handle is inspiring! Harry Altman was one of those teens and we found this great video of him before, during, and after a spelling bee. You will see that some of his traits, common to spelling bee competitors, are personified perfectly in our musical comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee!
As sung in the beginning of the show, “Once you start to spell a word you may start over, but the sequences of letters already spoken may not be changed,” so many spellers have interesting techniques to make sure they have the word correct before speaking it aloud. Rebecca Sealfon, the 1997 Scripps winner, used the common trick of whispering each letter behind her hand before speaking it into the microphone. However, this video of her winning word is quite the opposite!
This speller is one tough cookie!
Spellers are also allowed to ask for the word’s definition and language of origin, and for the word to be used in a sentence. The word may also be repeated for clarification. In this speller’s case, that’s a very good thing!
