Wednesday, May 27, 2009

KAO. VAVILALA. SHIVASHANKAR. BRIDWELL: Congratulations to the 41 spellers who will be moving on to tomorrow's National Spelling Bee semifinals.

Included in that list are all 4 returning four-timers, about half the three-timers, 2008 runner-up Sidharth Chand, last year's youngest-ever Sriram Hathwar (now 9), three Canadians, Jamaica's Shari-Jo Miller and Virginia's Andrew Traylor, whose bio explains that he "is quite the advocate for coffee, ramen noodles, and burritos."

Our annual pool will open at 8pm EDT tonight in a separate post. Our rules will remain the same as in previous years -- select two spellers, only one of whom can be from among the four rock stars for whom this is a fourth attempt at glory (i.e., the four in this post's title.) You will get one point for each word your spellers correctly spell during tomorrow's rounds of the Bee, which resumes at 10am on ESPN. Most points wins; tiebreaker will be whoever has the individual speller going the furthest. While individual spellers can be used more than once, you cannot repeat the same pairing that someone else has already submitted. First come, first served, and the pool will close when the kids start spelling tomorrow morning.

Previous pool winners are Elicia Chamberlin (Close/Hooks), Professor Jeff and Amy (O'Dorney & Thomas/Horton), and KJ last year (Mishra & Shivashankar). Will your name be inscribed with theirs?

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