‘Bloodbath’: Hyped Bee contenders see hopes dashed on spelling’s saddest day

When Achyut Ethiraj’s final appearance in the Scripps National Spelling Bee ended much earlier than he expected, the 14-year-old grimaced at the microphone, quietly walked offstage and left the ballroom with his mother’s arm wrapped around his back.

Achyut had plenty of company among the more than 100 spellers who were eliminated on Wednesday, spelling’s saddest day.

“I didn’t expect to get out, but I did, and I guess I have to accept the truth now,” said Achyut, an eighth-grader from Fort Wayne, Indiana. “I’m glad I can go to high school and do other things, but I’m not sure what to do now that I’m done with spelling.”

“It’s my last year and I expected to do better, but I think I did,” he said. “And I have to move on.”

The structure of the spelling bee has undergone many changes over time, but over the past three years under director Corrie Loeffler, the competition has become very tough, very quickly for spellers who make it past the preliminary rounds.

The morning started with 148 spellers on stage. By the end of the first quarter-final round, 59 were left, and 46 of them managed to complete a vocabulary round to reach the semi-finals. The plan was to narrow the field to about a dozen finalists by the end of the day. The finals are Thursday night, with the winner receiving a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.

Starting in the quarterfinals, the bee’s word panel can use any of the more than half a million words in Webster’s Unabridged dictionary, plus some geographical names that don’t even appear in that section. Although the panel attempts to maintain a consistent level of difficulty, this may vary from word to word.

That’s when luck comes into play.

Achyut was asked to spell the word ‘sistine’. It is derived from the Sistine Chapel and is an adjective meaning “a light blue color.” He chose “cistine,” and his coach, Grace Walters, had self-doubt.

“I’m sure when I was making my lists I thought, ‘Oh, everyone knows the Sistine Chapel.’ But the reality is that these children are between 10 and 14 years old. They may not have the cultural knowledge that us older people have,” said 22-year-old Walters, a former speller. “So that’s definitely something that I think I overlooked when I was helping him prepare.”

Two years ago, Achyut finished in a tie for 14th, and last year he finished in a tie for 23rd. This year he was tied with another player at 60th place, joining the 89 others eliminated in the round.

“My rank has become lower. But the reality is that my preparation has increased tremendously,” Achyut said. “And I don’t know how that goes together, but I know I know the words and I deserve a good break.”

He has a lot of company. Spellers who set high expectations for themselves based on past performance often fall short. Rare is a player like Vanya Shivashankar, who came in with huge buzz in 2015 after years of strong results and eventually won the trophy. Even Shivashankar had a setback last year when a written spelling and vocabulary test kept her out of the finals.

Naysa Modi, the 2018 runner-up, did not reach the final the following year. Ishika Varipilli, who was hoping to win this year’s prize in her third and final attempt, finished tied for 47th after missing a vocabulary word, “swanky,” and said afterward that she was “trying to put it together to hold’. .

“These kids put a lot of pressure on themselves. I think they’re getting nervous. They’re worried. They’re more focused on, ‘What if I don’t make it? What if this happens? What if that happens?’” Walters said. “The kids feel around them that they are looked up to as previous finalists, previous semi-finalists, and they internalize that people expect something of them.”

Aliyah Alpert, who finished ninth in 2022, missed the bee entirely last year because she mixed up the word “recoup” in the Yavapai County spelling bee in her home state of Arizona.

“It was on the list, I completely knew the word, but I ignored it. Suffocated,” said 13-year-old Aliyah, who is back this year.

Matthew Bader came in knowing he might not improve on his finish from last year, a tie for 57th.

“The further you go one year in the competition, the more likely you are to do worse the next year,” says Matthew, a 14-year-old from Peachtree City, Georgia. “I actually didn’t mind leaving. Win or lose, to be here, it’s a pretty big achievement.”

Ananth Chepuri of Bradenton, Florida, thought his daughter, 11-year-old Amara, was eliminated by one of the hardest words (“efectic”) of what he called an inconsistent round. But he knew it would be difficult before she got to the microphone.

“It was brutal,” Chepuri said. “The first child, I felt so sorry for him. This was a massacre!”