- spelling+vocab computer quiz Tuesday morning.
- two live rounds on Wednesday, but if you're wrong on either, you're out, period -- acing the computer quiz cannot save you. (I forget if anyone has been so saved in recent year.)
- Computer quiz + Wednesday live round results yields a cut down to 50.
- Another spelling+vocab computer quiz Wednesday night.
- Two, and only two, live rounds Thursday
morningafternoon. Ding-and-out. - No matter what happens, even if you've gotten all four live rounds correct, you can still be cut before prime time. They're trying to take no more than twelve, but at least nine spellers into prime time. Read carefully: "Beginning at 72 on the chart, spellers at each consecutive scoring level are added until a sum of no more than 12 spellers has been attained. All remaining spellers are eliminated unless, in the course of applying the maximum of 12 standard, it appears that fewer than nine spellers will qualify for the Championship Finals: in this circumstance, spellers at the next consecutive scoring level (or levels) may be named as Championship Finalists if, in sole determination of Bee officials, there is sufficient time and word list content to accommodate additional spellers in the Championship Finals."
- Championship finals appear to be the same, except it's on ESPN this year, not interfering with Shondaland.
I like the idea of adding vocabulary to the Bee, though not at this late date for this year's competition. I expect that this was also motivated in part by ESPN's (or the Bee's) desire to have greater control over the timing of Thursday's competition, that they could make sure to hit their target number for primetime through means other that (what has seemed to be) artificially adjusting the difficulty of the word list between and within rounds.
Which leads to the fundamental question: are we okay with a Bee in which many kids will be eliminated not be spelling a word wrong on stage, but by performance in a private, computerized competition? Clear pros and cons -- it spares these young people that public moment of failure, which can be both scarring and motivating -- but it also deprives the audience of the full drama. I have long noted that the Bee is, in essence, a long process by which we see every kid (but one) misspell a word, which is ironic and more than a little sad, but putting myself back in my early adolescent hypercompetitive brain, I think that's what the kids want -- win or lose (and likely lose), to have it happen on the stage, in that moment of spotlight and pressure.
My thoughts on this are not firm, and obviously I'd love to hear from our broader Bee community on this one.
added: As Bee veteran Joseph White of the AP now reports, this is, in part, a response to the the 2010 debacle when a Thursday afternoon round was cut short because too many kids were being eliminated, leading kids in the back-of-the-alphabet states a shortcut to primetime.
added 4.10.03: One writer wonders whether this might have a disproportionate impact against Indian-American spellers, who may be more likely to go the memorization route.
added: As Bee veteran Joseph White of the AP now reports, this is, in part, a response to the the 2010 debacle when a Thursday afternoon round was cut short because too many kids were being eliminated, leading kids in the back-of-the-alphabet states a shortcut to primetime.
added 4.10.03: One writer wonders whether this might have a disproportionate impact against Indian-American spellers, who may be more likely to go the memorization route.
