OXON HILL, Md. — 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 140 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. 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. At the end of the day, eight finalists remained. They return Thursday night, when the winner will receive a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.
The champion won’t be Shradha Rachamreddy, who finished third last year and was a consensus favorite to go all the way. She was eliminated for exactly the kind of “super short, tricky word” she said she focused on studying after misspelling “orle” last year. This year it was ‘varan’, a type of lizard. She added an extra ‘r’, and former spellers in the audience gasped at her mistake.
“I am in shock and despair,” said Dev Shah, the 2023 champion.
“We all thought she would win,” added last year’s runner-up Charlotte Walsh.
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 geographic names that don’t even appear in that section. Although the panel attempts to maintain a consistent level of difficulty in each round, 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 finished in 60th place alongside the 88 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. Rare is a player like Vanya Shivashankar, who came in with huge buzz in 2015 after years of strong finishes and eventually won. 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,” saying afterwards that she was “trying to keep it together.” ”
In the semi-finals, Shradha was followed to the exit by two more top ten finishers from 2023: Aryan Khedkar and Sarah Fernandes. Aryan received a long hug from fellow competitor Faizan Zaki before leaving the stage.
“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. Choked,” said 13-year-old Aliyah, who returned this year and was eliminated in the semifinals.
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.
“It was brutal,” Chepuri said. “The first child, I felt so sorry for him. This was a massacre!”
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Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow him at https://x.com/APBenNuckols