Scripps National Spelling Bee rules changes aim to make ties less likely

WASHINGTON – In an effort to make it less likely that the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee will have co-champions for the fourth year in a row, bee organizers announced rules changes Tuesday aimed at creating an effective tie-breaker.

Contestants still on stage after the first day of the bee will be given a written test of 12 spelling words and 12 vocabulary items. If after 25 rounds involving three or fewer spellers a champion hasn’t won, the results of the written test will be used to determine the winner.

That still doesn’t guarantee there won’t be co-champions again since, as anyone familiar with the caliber of the competition knows, these kids don’t often make mistakes at this level.

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Another change will have spellers handwrite their preliminary classroom written spelling test, which will then be hand-graded. That was most recently the practice in the 2011 bee. In 2015 and last year, the preliminary test was recorded on Scantron test forms.

The preliminary test, known as Round 1, is used to limit the number of spellers on stage for the final rounds shown nationwide on a live, prime-time broadcast.

Jairam Hathwar, 13, of Painted Post, N.Y., and Nahir Janga, 11, of Houston, were co-champions last year.

“The very first bee started with nine students and now the Scripps National Spelling Bee program reaches more than 11 million,” Paige Kimble, executive director of the program and a champion speller herself, said in a statement.

The year’s 90th national spelling bee will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center south of Washington, D.C. It will consist of 290 students aged 5 to15 from all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Department of Defense Schools in Europe. Also competing will be spellers from the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.