Nine finalists compete for $50,000 top prize at 8pm ET
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Spelling Bee quiz: can you beat the past years’ winners?
Reach Bryan on Bluesky at @BryanAGraham or email
Well, here we are. It’s all happening. The championship finals of the 97th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee are upon us. The eyes of the English-language orthographic world are trained on the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, where spelling’s biggest night is a little more than an hour away from popping off.
More than 11m students, ranging in age from six to 14, participated in this year’s competition at one stage or another. Of those, 243 earned a trip to (just outside) the nation’s capital by winning spelling bees organized by their local sponsors, typically newspapers, universities or non-profits. All roads have led to tonight: the Super Bowl for smart kids. And it all gets started at 8pm ET.
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