The bell rings twice: a competitor spelling bee gets a reprieve

OXON HILL, MD – The first round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Tuesday sparked a rare controversy.

Max Greenspan, a 13-year-old wild spelling from Scottsdale, Arizona, received the word "fair word," a French phrase that means "the exact word."

He went through "m-o-t j-u-s-t". Then he stopped for about five seconds. He lowered his eyes. Chief Justice Mary Brooks rang the bell which means a misspelled word. Stunned, Max walked to the side of the stage.

In an interview, Max said that he had stopped because he was thinking about the opportunity to add the "e".

"Should not I have had two minutes?" I thought it was the time it took to spell, "he says. "I think it was unfair, I never knew it was a rule, that you could not stop it altogether."

He did not know that it was a rule because it is not a rule. Upon review, the judges agreed that Brooks had sounded the bell prematurely and that Max had been reinstated. Only six machines have been relocated since 1998, when Scripps got rid of its appeal process.

"We could not determine with certainty that he had given us a concrete signal that he had finished," Brooks said. "It was a human error on our part, it could still think, think, think … If you have any doubt, you must make the right decision."

Max ended up hearing the bell twice on Tuesday, and there was no respite for the second time, when he was mistaken for "pseudologist".

WILD CARD OUTPUTS

This is the second year that the bee includes participants with jokers. Scripps has launched the generic card program to provide a new route of access to the bee to qualified spellers from highly competitive regions. Last year's champion, Karthik Nemmani, was a wild card, losing to the county level in front of the girl that he finally beat for the title.

Generic card launters must only have won at the school level. Most spellers qualified for nationals earn by winning a regional or even national bee. While the expenses of the qualifiers are borne by the sponsors, the wild-cards must pay a registration fee of $ 1,500, travel, accommodation and accommodation. There is even an extra fee of $ 600 if the wild cards choose not to stay at the hotel on site.

For Karthik, the expense was worth it – he won more than $ 40,000 in cash and prizes. But not all wild cards are at Karthik's level, and adding wild cards has changed the direction of the opening round. Of the 44 spellings that misinterpreted the words, 25 were wild cards.

"The premise behind all of this is good, I think it could be improved in some ways," said Sylvie Lamontagne, a former speller, about the wildcard program known as "RSVBee". & # 39; & # 39; The amount of money that it costs to do RSVBee is unfair to kids who simply do not have the money, but who might have the talent. "

For the first round of spelling on stage, Scripps uses the words of a list of studies in advance. Paige Kimble, the executive director of the bee, once dismissed questions as to whether the round should be more difficult, saying that Spellers had seized the opportunity to "shine" on stage.

Instead, the cycle now puts an uncomfortable spotlight on spellers who are not competitive even though they have paid to be there.

Suspended

At his first chance at the microphone, Charles Fennell, 11, of Bloomfield, Connecticut, received the word "koto" and tried to put himself under pressure.

"Do you mind if I wait for the light to change color?" Charles asked.

The Spellers have two minutes. When they have 45 seconds left, the light above them turns yellow and, with 30 seconds remaining, it turns red.

"Pay attention to your time," said the pronoun Jacques Bailly.

"I just want to see it," said Charles. "Can not you change it faster?"

Then he gave up. "OK, I'm just going to spell it," he says.

In an interview, Charles insisted that his decision to wait for the light was spontaneous.

"I have never been to a country before, and I want to live everything, including light that changes color," said Charles.

But the excitement of the moment was too much for him.

"I'm impatient, so I could not wait that long," he said. "If I had had a longer word like" authoritarianism, "I would have at least been able to see the yellow light."

Later in the round, Quinn Meadows had an "authoritarianism" and he went through it. Meanwhile, Charles was developing a strategy for the next round.

"Ask for all the information," says Charles, "at least twice."

He stuck to this plan. Charles had another short note, "ginko", in the second round, and stalled himself, forcing Bailly to repeat the original language and use it twice in a sentence. When the light turned yellow, he turned around and looked at her with apparent satisfaction before spelling the word correctly.

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