Brush off the dictionaries and fasten the bifocals – it's officially "Bee Week."
The 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee returns to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland with preliminary rounds beginning Tuesday and continuing Wednesday before a champion – champions? – is crowned Thursday night.
Of the 245 spellers, ages 8 to 15, 180 are first-time national finalists. Within the 65 returning spellers are a handful of competitors who have made it to the finals in recent years – four from 2023 and two from 2022.
Finalists compete for escalating cash prizes, and the winner is awarded $52,500 in cash total. A trio of spellers are competing in their fourth Scripps National Spelling Bees. Sixteen spellers are in their third Bee, and 13 are making their third consecutive appearance.
The preliminaries, quarterfinals and semifinals can all be streamed on a variety of platforms: ION Plus, Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com. A special semifinals broadcast will air Wednesday from 8-10 p.m. ET on ION and Scripps News, as well as Bounce, Grit, ION Mystery, Laff and Defy TV.
The finals will air live in primetime on ION from 8-10 p.m. on Thursday, May 30.
Scripps reported its best ratings for a finals broadcast since 2012 with 6.1 million viewers last year, which was a 30% increase compared to 2022. ION is Scripps' national network and has aired the Bee since 2022; ESPN previously had the broadcast rights for the Bee.
Tuesday: Preliminaries (rounds one and two), 8 a.m-4:10 p.m.; preliminaries (round three), 4:20-7:40 p.m.
Wednesday: Quarterfinals, 8 a.m.-12:45 p.m.; semifinals 2:30-6:30 p.m.
Thursday: Finals, 8-10 p.m., ION
Shradha Rachamreddy (speller 13) tied for third place in last year's competition and is considered a front-runner heading into the week. Aryan Khedkar (speller 111) tied for fifth in 2023 and Tarini Nandakumar (speller 205), finished ninth. Sarah Fernandes (speller 131) tied for 10th place.
Aliyah Alpert (speller 4) and Kirsten Santos (speller 212) are the pair of returning 2022 finalists.
Logan Edwards (speller 197), Nandakumar and Rachamreddy are all making their fourth national final appearances.
The contestants are representing 173 public schools, 32 private schools, 21 parochial schools and 12 charter schools. Seven are homeschooled.
All spellers are given one-year subscriptions to both Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online and Britannica Online Premium. Quarterfinalists receive a commemorative medal and a $100 gift card, while semifinalists receive a $500 gift card.
Prize money for the finalists, from the Bee, is awarded in the following order:
The winner receives:
Sanil Thorat (speller 91), a third grader from Fairfield Elementary Magnet School in Shreveport, Louisiana, is the only 8-year-old who made it to the national competition. There are five 9-year-olds spelling.
Dev Shah, now a rising sophomore in high school from Florida, won the competition as an eighth grader last year. His winning word was psammophile.
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