![]() We've dropped the Merriam-Webster definitions beside them, to help if you're testing your friends and family (National Spelling Bee competitors are allowed to ask for this, so your loved ones are, too). So here's hoping the committee's secretive ranking system works, and no one gets stuck with too obscure an entry.Zaila Avant-garde is the first African American to ever win the Scripps National Spelling Bee With nearly half a million words in Webster's to choose from, spellers cannot possibly prepare for all of them. It can be made by any vowel and sounds kind of like "uh." Many spellers have stumbled over that one during final rounds, which is why knowing the language of origin can be so particularly helpful in figuring out what vowel (or even "y") to use in spelling the ə properly. Roeder also found that one sound tends to trip spellers up more than any other - what he deems "the deadly ə," otherwise known as the schwa sound. More letters doesn't necessarily mean more trouble for excellent spellers, which likely factors into how the Scripps' committee decides on inclusion or exclusion of new words. He found the median length of spelling words to be nine letters, with the average length of incorrectly spelled words falling at 8.95 letters. Interestingly, word length seems not much of a stumbling block for the serious speller. Oliver Roeder - also for FiveThirtyEight - conducted his own set of research on predictions regarding whether a word would be spelled correctly. In his interview with NPR, Bailey indicated that sets of words were chosen based on their language of origin, while other words were plucked sometimes at random by committee members. Sight words are high frequency words that should be read fluently and automatically upon sight they are among the most common English words and many are not. As always there are 7 letters and here the center letter is the letter D. This Monday’s spelling bee puzzle was built by Sam Ezersky. Today we are publishing the answers of NYT Spelling Bee Augpuzzle. Next most difficult were words that originated in Persian, with an average accuracy rate of 58 percent. Leave a Comment / Spelling Bee / By Spelling Bee. The bee competitors only got Hebrew words right 45 percent of the time. These words tripped up champion spellers, so don’t feel too bad if they all seem foreign. Among those 29 languages, Hebrew stood out as the "hardest" for students to accurately spell. Below is a list of some of the hardest Scripps spelling words. In fact, words that originated in Latin, Middle English, or French accounted for a full 54 percent of all spelling bee words during that 20-year period.įiveThirtyEight looked at 29 languages of origin that had words appear at least 20 times past the first round of national competition. Ten Hard Spelling Bee Words You Should Know Word 1: Nauseous Word 2: Dilate Word3: Indict Word 4: Liquefy Word 5: Wednesday Word 6: Sherbet Word 7. Words with a Latin background appeared most often in competition. An analysis run on the spelling words used from 1994 - 2014 indicated that the "language of origin" spellers best brush up on is Latin. While Bailey did not specify how that rating system broke down, he did indicate there are disagreements amongst committee members at times.Īccording to FiveThirtyEight, all words asked at the competition will appear in Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Each potential word is given a rating by the committee on a scale of 1-5. In a 2005 interview with NPR, Jacques Bailey - the official pronouncer for that year's National Spelling Bee - verified they begin searching for words immediately upon the close of spring's annual spelling final. According to Slate, the committee is composed of 12 people, and those members get started on collecting words as soon as the national competition wraps up in D.C. But apparently, the process for putting that list together isn't even as mysterious as getting information on just who is a part of the committee. According to a 2009 article from Slate, there is a committee that compiles the list of words. The event is now broadcast on ESPN so viewers nationwide can get a little taste of just how little they know of the sprawling and quirky English language - and its spelling hurdles.īut getting current information on how those words are chosen is no easy task. While the event has grown in renown and fandom over its 90-year history, there's still little known about how National Spelling Bee words are chosen - perhaps as little as you know about what the words themselves even mean.Įvery year, hundreds of students, along with their beaming families, descend on Washington, D.C., for the Bee. The annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is more mysterious than you might think.
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