93rd Scripps National Spelling Bee | |
---|---|
Date | July 8, 2021 |
Location | ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, Bay Lake, Florida |
Winner | Zaila Avant-garde |
Age | 14 |
Residence | Harvey, Louisiana |
Winning word | Murraya |
No. of contestants | 209 [1] |
Pronouncer | Jacques Bailly and Brian Sietsema |
Preceded by | 92nd Scripps National Spelling Bee |
Followed by | 94th Scripps National Spelling Bee |
The 93rd Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Bay Lake, Florida. The finals were held on July 8, 2021, and televised on ESPN2 and ESPN. [2] It was won by Zaila Avant-garde, the first African American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, [1] [3] [4] and the second black person to do so (after Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica). [5]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 spelling bee has been cancelled for the previous year.[ citation needed ]
For 2021, the first round was held virtually[ clarification needed ] on June 12 [6] and had 209 spellers from the United States and several other countries. There were eleven finalists: ten Americans and one Bahamian, the first from his country to make it to the final. [7] [8]
Jill Biden, the current First Lady of the United States, attended in person. She previously attended back in 2009. [9]
The competition went 18 rounds in total. The third-to-last speller was eliminated in round 14 after misspelling athanor , a type of alchemical furnace. Avant-garde and the runner-up, Chaitra Thummala, then competed head-to-head for three rounds. In the last of these, Thummala misspelled neroli oil , giving Zaila Avant-garde the opportunity to spell murraya correctly for the victory.
Avant-garde is the second black person to win the competition, after Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica, who remains the only person not from the United States to do so. [5]
Following the 2019 final where eight players tied at the end of the competition, a second list of championship words was added for a tiebreaking round. When the tiebreaking round is used after all championship words have been exhausted, or the round concludes after 1 hour, 55 minutes of the televised broadcast, remaining contestants, in numerical order, spell the list of championship words in 90 seconds. They can still ask for definition, language of origin, part of speech, alternate pronunciations, and the use in a sentence, but that will be part of the 90-second period. The contestant who spells the most words correctly in the spell-off round will be declared champion, with a tiebreaker of greater percentage of correctly spelled words in the round will determine the winner. A tie may still exist if the percentage is identical. However, in the actual final, the round was not used, as the Bee did not run overlong. [10]
A spelling bee is a competition in which contestants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, usually with a varying degree of difficulty. To compete, contestants must memorize the spellings of words as written in dictionaries, and recite them accordingly.
Murraya is a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae. It is distributed in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. The center of diversity is in southern China and Southeast Asia. When broadly circumscribed, the genus has about 17 species. A narrower circumscription contains only eight species, others being placed in Bergera and Merrillia.
The 79th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held in Washington, D.C., on May 31 and June 1, 2006. For the first time in the Bee's history, ABC broadcast the Championship Rounds on primetime television.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is an annual spelling bee held in the United States. The bee is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scripps Company and is held at a hotel or convention center in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area during the week following Memorial Day weekend. Since 2011, it has been held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center hotel in National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, just outside Washington D.C. It was previously held at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington D.C. from 1996 to 2010.
The 85th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the Gaylord National, in Oxon Hill, Maryland from May 27 to May 31, 2012, and was broadcast live on ESPN3. The championship finals occurred on May 31, 2012.
The 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held from May 28 to May 30, 2013 at the Gaylord National in Oxon Hill, Maryland and was broadcast live on ESPN3, ESPN2, and ESPN. For the first time, the competition included a vocabulary quiz in addition to the usual spelling challenge. Arvind Mahankali of Bayside, New York won the competition and received the $30,000 grand prize. Including local feeder tournaments, an estimated 11 million children participated.
The 87th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held from May 27 to May 29, 2014 at the Gaylord National in Oxon Hill, Maryland and was broadcast live on ESPN3, the semi-finals on ESPN2, with the final rounds live on ESPN. Ansun Sujoe of Fort Worth, Texas and Sriram Hathwar of Painted Post, New York won the competition, making the 87th Bee the twelfth in the past sixteen competitions to have an Indian-American champion.
The 21st Scripps National Spelling Bee was hosted in Washington, District of Columbia on May 28, 1948, by the E.W. Scripps Company. The winner was 14-year-old Jean Chappelear of Ohio, who correctly spelled the word psychiatry.
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The 72nd Scripps National Spelling Bee was held in Washington, D.C., on June 2–3, 1999, sponsored by the E.W. Scripps Company.
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The 89th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland on May 24–26, 2016.
The 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, United States from May 30 to June 1, 2017, with "Bee Week" events running for spellers between May 28 and June 3, and televised coverage on May 31 and June 1. Ananya Vinay, 12, won the competition by successfully spelling "marocain" in the final round. In fact, she made history as she had placed 172nd place in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee, and then she won the 2017 edition. There is a remarkable moment when Shourav Dasari correctly spelled "Mogollon" in five seconds.
The 91st Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland from May 29 to 31, 2018. The winner was 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani, an eighth grader from McKinney, Texas, who correctly spelled "koinonia" for the win. Due to a rule change in how spellers can make it to the Bee, the bee's total field of 515 spellers was a large increase over prior years.
The 92nd Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, from May 27 to 30, 2019. The finals were held on May 30, 2019, and televised on ESPN2 and ESPN. It featured 562 total contestants and was won by eight co-champions who had lasted through twenty rounds.
Zaila Avant-garde is an American speller, basketball player, and juggler. She won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee. She is the first African-American contestant to win the bee and is the second Black winner, after Jamaica's Jody-Anne Maxwell.
The 94th Scripps National Spelling Bee was a spelling bee that was held at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. The finals were held on June 2, 2022, and televised on Ion Television and Bounce TV, marking the first time in 27 years that the Bee was not televised on an ESPN network. The winner of the bee was Harini Logan, an 8th–grade girl from San Antonio, Texas, who won with 22 words spelt correctly during the Bee's first spell-off round.
The 95th Scripps National Spelling Bee was a spelling bee competition that was held at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.