OXON HILL, Md. (AP) – A four-letter word sent Shradha Rachamreddy to finishing in third place in last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee.
As the remaining spellers dwindled, Shradha was given the ‘orle’, a heraldic term meaning several small charges arranged to form a border at the edge of a field. It sounds exactly like “oral”. Shradha went with “orel” and heard the dreaded bell that signals a misspelled word.
“I overcomplicated it,” Shradha said almost a year later. “It seems simple. It should have been simple, but I missed it.”
The good news for Shradha was that she almost won it all as a seventh grader, meaning she had one year of eligibility left. The 14-year-old from San Jose, Calif., returned as one of 245 spellers competing in this year’s bee, which began with preliminary rounds Tuesday at a convention center outside Washington, D.C.
Like other returning spellers, Shradha tried to learn from her mistake. She devoted part of her studies this year to the kinds of words she tends to miss.
“I missed a four-letter word, so my weakness tends to be these super short, difficult words, and I worked on putting them together in a list,” Shradha said. “I’m trying to spot the words that seem likely to come up. If they’re not particularly spelled the way they sound, then I’m like, ‘OK, it’s fair game,’ and I study it.”
Learning as many words as possible is not a foolproof approach. No one in the nearly century-long history of the bee has been able to memorize the more than 500,000 words in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, any of which may be selected for inclusion by Scripps Word Table former champion bees, linguists and other experts.
Last year’s champion, Dev Shah, wrote in a Washington Post article that to become a spelling champion, you have to accept that you’ll be asked a word you don’t know — and be calm enough to understand it.
“The faculty of speculation is everything,” he wrote.
Aryan Khedkhar, a 13-year-old from Rochester Hills, Michigan, who finished tied for fifth last year, breaks the difficult words into categories.
“There are words with roots and words without roots that you just have to memorize. The ones you have to memorize, I use language patterns. This really helps. If it doesn’t have language patterns, I just try to use the simplest way possible,” Aryan said. “That’s the thing about spelling. It’s not about knowing as many words as you can.”
Aditi Muthukumar said she tried to overcome her weaknesses in words derived from French or from many languages of the Indian subcontinent. But the 13-year-old from Westminster, Colorado, expects she’ll have to deal with a word she doesn’t know while competing in her final bee.
“I mean, probably,” he said, “and I hope I’m okay with that.”
TEAM GHANA
This year’s three Ghanaian spellers appeared in uniform — black turtlenecks, white pants, shoes emblazoned with the Ghanaian flag. The centerpiece: specially designed jackets with sleeves made of woven kente fabric.
“We got to wear it,” speller Abena Kwaffo said with a laugh.
Spelling is an individual pursuit, but Team Ghana was united by national pride. Ghana has sent a host of spellers over the years, enough so that former competitor Darren Sackey is coaching this year’s trio.
“It’s teamwork. The spellers work very hard together,” said Salome Dzakpasu, the program director from Ghana. “We train together on weekends, weekdays, sometimes in the evenings, learning how to juggle schoolwork and preparing for the bee.”
While the last quarter century of the bee is dominated by child of Indian immigrantsthe only international champion was Jamaica’s Jodi-Anne Maxwell in 1998. Ghana’s best finish was a tie for 18th by Afua Ansah in 2016.
N’Dom Darko-Asare, a seventh-grader from Ghana competing for the third time, is more comfortable than ever.
“You might be afraid to stand on stage. “When you’ve been there before, it doesn’t scare you as much,” said 13-year-old N’Dom.
VOCABULARY, DEFINED
Spellers were asked multiple choice vocabulary questions on the scene since 2021, and before that, vocabulary was part of a written test that determined which spellers went to the semi-finals.
However, Scripps treated “vocabulary” as a dirty word, using a euphemism: “meaning word.” This meant that when introducing vocabulary questions, announcers Jacques Bailly and Reverend Brian Sietsema were forced to use the awkward construction, “Your word means word is…”
In Tuesday’s preliminary rounds, Sietsema handled pronunciation duties for the first batch of spellers. Those who got their first word right remained on the microphone while Sietsema told them, to give an example, “Your vocabulary word is ‘terrarium’.” asked to define that word.)
“There were discussions about it,” Bailly said, adding that although he was not responsible for the change, “I always thought it should be ‘vocabulary’.”
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Ben Nuckols has been covering the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow him at