OXON HILL, Md. – The finals of the 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee began Thursday night by remembering its first two champions.
With Jeopardy uber-champion Ken Jennings and eight former winners in the house, the bee paid tribute to Frank Neuhauser and Pauline Bell, who both died in their 90s recently. Neuhauser won in 1925 with the word “gladiolus,” and Bell won in 1926 with the “cerise,” so bee officials placed an arrangement of cerise-colored gladioli at the base of the trophy pedestal onstage.
Then the 13 finalists entered the stage, touching the trophy along the way, took a bow and resumed competing for the spelling crown that comes with more than $40,000 in cash and prizes.
The finalists were all who remained from the 275 spellers from across the country and world who arrived at the start of the week in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The concluding rounds were broadcast in prime time for the sixth consecutive year.
The spelling bee kids just keep getting better and better. Even words like “chlorthalidone,” “dreikanter,” “renminbi” and “helichrysum” couldn’t sufficiently narrow down the field in the semifinals, which needed 95 minutes of overtime earlier Thursday to whittle the competitors from 41 to 13.