A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

IT BEE-GINS:  At this moment, two-hundred seventy five of the world's best English language spellers have gathered in a hotel conference room in National Harbor, Maryland, for the written component of the 84th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.  Unlike previous such tests administered via computer, this year all the kids will be in the room together as Dr. Jacque Bailly reads the word live, along with alternate pronunciations, the part of speech, origin, definition and using each in a sentence. Repeat info, pause for thirty seconds, move to the next word.  (Our takes on previous written rounds: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.)

Their totals on this twenty-five word test, combined with tomorrow's two guaranteed trips before the microphone, will determine who are the up-to-fifty kids who'll make it to Thursday's competition. Tomorrow's rounds will be streamed online on ESPN3 in two feeds - the traditional info-packed feed and, for the first time, "a second 'play along' version, featuring the option to view its coverage without graphics for fans at home to test their knowledge against the champion spellers."

The competitors are evenly divided by gender, and range in age from eight-year-old Ethan Ruggeri of Virginia to a pair of fifteen-year-olds.  Twenty-four have relatives who have done this before, though for the first time since 2005 there won't be a Shivashankar among them. We do have two returners from 2010's primetime finals: Canada's Greatest Speller, third-timer Laura Newcombe and Carlisle (PA)'s Joanna Ye, whose preparation looked like this:

Soon after the bee ended last year she embarked on her plan to try for the finals this year — to study the entire dictionary, word by word. “It took me about five months. I compiled a huge list of words to study — about 40,000 words — which took up over 800 pages of notebook paper,” Ye said.

“All the words are in the dictionary. I thought if I memorized it, I’d have the bee down,” she said. But she soon found out there are way too many words. Many, like a genus of bacteria, would be impossible to reasonably use in a sentence in the bee, so she didn’t worry about them, and instead focused on the ones that would be more likely to be in the bee.

Along with the six notebooks filled with words to study, her father, Yunshan, helped her make about 10,000 flashcards. “I was planning on making 40,000, but I stopped because it took too long to make them.”

“It was tedious. I spent several hours a day reading the dictionary,” she said, but listening to Bob Dylan while she did it helped make it bearable. “I love multitasking,” she said.

We, too, love multitasking, love these kids and love the Bee. That's why we're back for a ninth straight year to live-blog it all, joined by a number of former national finalists, Bee SuperFan Shonda Rhimes, and anyone else who feels like dropping by to celebrate and enjoy this competition. Do enjoy.