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New-format Scripps spelldown begins

Published:Wednesday | May 29, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Alotus Nguyen Wei (right), 11, from Lima, Ohio, is hugged by her sister Alexis Wei, accompanied by their parents HueAnh Nguyen (second left) and Victor Wei, as she prepares to take the National Spelling Bee's vocabulary test in Oxon Hill, Maryland, yesterday. - AP

OXON HILL, Maryland (AP):

Jae Canetti said he screamed "No!" when he learned the National Spelling Bee would be introducing a vocabulary test. He started changing the way he prepared, studying definitions of words on the bus ride to school each day.

At least the extra work appeared to have paid off. When the 11-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia, took the test yesterday morning, he felt he did just fine.

"I knew a lot of the words," Jae said. "It definitely was not, like, painstaking."

The 86th edition of the Scripps National Spelling Bee took on new meaning, or rather, lots of meanings, with organisers having decreed that the precocious youngsters need to prove they know more than just how to spell. The 281 competitors took a 45-minute computer test that probed their knowledge of both spelling and vocabulary, with the results to be combined with today's onstage round to determine who advances to the semifinals tomorrow.

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For the most part, the spellers had the same reaction to the vocabulary test: Good idea, but they wished they had known about it sooner.

"I think everybody wasn't expecting it, because it was something you weren't thinking they were going to put in," said 12-year-old Mary Elizabeth Horton from West Melbourne, Florida. "But it definitely changes everything."

Organisers announced the addition of vocabulary seven weeks ago, saying it reinforces the bee's mission to encourage students to broaden their knowledge of the English language. They waited until all of the qualifying bees had been completed so that the spellers would be on equal footing in their preparation.

"Before they announced the vocabulary, I paid attention to the definitions, but I didn't focus too much," said 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali of New York. "But then after they announced it, I occasionally had my dad quiz me on vocabulary words, and I studied the definitions once in a while."

Arvind is one of the favourites, having finished third last year, and as he took the vocabulary test he was grateful for a trick everyone learns at school: the process of elimination.