Spelling Bee ran out of words, and this desi duo is to blame
In the end, after 20 rounds had distilled a group of 562 competitive spellers to just eight, those who were left remained in a merciless logjam. On Thursday night, after the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee announced that it was running out of challenging words, each was crowned the winner in an eight-way tie.
It turned out the winners had more in common than an aptitude for spelling: Six of them had relied on SpellPundit, a coaching company started last year by two former competitive spellers, the teenage siblings Shobha and Shourav Dasari of Texas.
One of the “octochamps,” Sohum Sukhatankar, 13, of Dallas said he had spent about 30 hours a week studying the 120,000 words SpellPundit had culled from the 472,000 words in the dictionary. For an annual subscription of $600, Spell-Pundit offers the massive list, which is sorted by difficulty levels and guarantees that it includes all words used in the competitions. Business took off after last year’s champion, Karthik Nemmani gave a shout-out to the service.
Of this year’s top 50 spellers, 38 were customers, according to Dasari, 18. One selling point, the siblings say, is that their comprehensive database of words and modules saves time. The Dasaris estimate that their service, which allows users to type the words instead of spelling them aloud, makes preparation four times faster.
But on Friday, some wondered whether the service had taken some of the innocence out of the contest.
“If spelling is ever going to work again: ‘do something about SpellPundit’,” wrote Jacob Williamson, a coach and former National Spelling Bee finalist, on his blog. SpellPundit — plus other coaching services — has fundamentally changed the national contest, the co-champions and their parents said.
Harder words, some observers said, may now be necessary. On Friday, the Spelling Bee officials said they were considering their options. Paige Kimble, the executive director, said: “We are inspired by their achievement. Among other things, they are going to inspire us to find ways to better challenge them in competition. ”
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References
- ^ Scripps National Spelling Bee (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Texas (www.happytrips.com)
- ^ Dallas (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Williamson (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
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