For almost 100 years, the Scripps Nationwide Spelling Bee has showcased the largest phrases from the youngest lexicologists. The inaugural champion, 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, appropriately spelled “gladiolus” to assert a prize of $500 on the Smithsonian Museum of Pure Historical past.
The phrases have solely gotten tougher, the strain better and the nationwide highlight bigger.
Of 231 opponents, a couple of dozen finalists have outmaneuvered their solution to the finals, which start at 8 p.m. Japanese time on Thursday on the Ion and Bounce networks and will run till about 10 p.m. The finals cap almost per week of competitors on the Nationwide Harbor, a resort and waterfront improvement in Maryland.
Many People grew acquainted with the bee from its nationwide broadcast on ESPN, the place it expanded in recognition, viewership and popular culture over the previous few a long time. However that modified final 12 months when the bee moved to Ion, a Scripps subsidiary, within the hopes of discovering viewers past paid TV subscribers.
In response to the bee, that wager labored: Viewership of the finals in 2022 was up 147 p.c 12 months over 12 months and was seen by 7.5 million viewers — the most important tv viewers since 2015.
The New York Occasions, which has coated spelling bees for nearly 150 years, will proceed that custom Thursday evening, reporting stay on the spellers’ tales and the phrases they face. Definitions will come from the competition’s dictionary companion, Merriam-Webster. The champion will take house greater than $50,000 in money and a number of reference works like a duplicate of the 1768 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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