Listen to this episode and get more information about it at theallusionist.org/beeing.
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, enter the apiary of language and attend the Scripps National Spelling Bee! Yessss, our Word Play series has reached WORD SPORTS, and today you’ll hear how it feels to be at the Bee, from past and recent finalists.
Members of the Allusioverse also received Beecaps of each of my days at the 2024 Bee, so if you would like to read those, go to theallusionist.org/donate.
On with the show.
HZ: The Spelling Bee year begins in September. Schools across the US hold spelling bees, the winners progress to regional bees, and the regional champions are eligible to compete in the nationals, which take place during the culmination of the Spelling Bee calendar, Bee Week, which this year takes place at the end of May Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland, on the banks of the Potomac River just south of Washington DC.
Bee Week starts on Sunday with a social event for the spellers, where they’re randomly put into teams of four and run around the hotel solving puzzles, like a treasure hunt or escape room, which does come with material prizes but the true prize is the kids getting to know each other and making friends and having fun. Then Monday evening is the big opening ceremony, where all this year’s contestants parade in through a big bee-striped tunnel. There are speeches. There are former champions and other Bee alums. There are comedy Bits with some of the Bee staff and current competitors. But, bright and early Tuesday, the competition starts: this year there were 245 spellers, and after a full day of preliminaries then another day of quarter-finals and semi-finals, eight finalists remained for the final on Thursday night. The week is capped with a big party on Friday night, the Bee Bash.
That’s Bee Week.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: My name is Corrie Loeffler and I'm the executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
This is actually my 30th time being at Bee Week this year. I've been working full time for the bee for about 18 years now, but my first trip here, It was in 1990 when I came to watch my brother compete. And I was a wee one. Once I saw my brother compete, I just had to - it wasn't even about following in his footsteps, it was: I got here, I saw a couple hundred kids who I could relate to, you know, I came from a small town where I had a lot of friends, but none of them that felt like these are my people and I got here and I was like, “Oh, I absolutely belong here.” And that was, you know, I was seven years old and I was like, "Oh, this is my thing."
HZ: You found your Beeple.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: My Beeple? Yeah. Love that.
HZ: Has that never happened before? There's so many bee puns around.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: I know - I haven't used that one.
HZ: You can have it.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: You've given me such a gift today.
HZ: Corrie’s brother Paul achieved 13th place in the 1990 national Spelling Bee, then Corrie competed herself three times 1994-1996. It's pretty common for siblings to compete in the Spelling Bee. And it's also pretty common for Bee alums to come back: to work for the Bee or appear during Bee Week; as well as Corrie being the Spelling Bee’s executive director, her brother Paul is Bee Week’s commentator.
COMMENTARY CLIP: Paul Loeffler: “Good morning everyone, welcome to the quarter-finals of the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee. I get to be your host, Paul Loeffler, and we’re continuing to cover all the rounds of the Bee until we crown a brand new champion…”
HZ: Why do you think it is that there are so many bee alums involved still, coming back?
CORRIE LOEFFLER: Yeah, we have our 1973 champion who's on our judging panel, our pronouncer is our 1980 champion... And what we hear over and over again from our alumni is not, "oh, wow, that made me a really good speller," which it probably did. But that's kind of beside the point once you get into your adult life and spelling is kind of just this foundational thing. But what did it do to change the way you saw yourself or you saw your prospects in life? That's what I think the real power of this particular week can be, is seeing yourself when you're 10 years old with all these lights and cameras and the eyes of the nation on you. And you're like, "wow, I can do pretty big things, even though I'm tiny right now." And what does that mean for your future, right? So just that broadening of horizons is, I think, the most special thing. And it's fun. It gets really fun. We have a great time together. It's our bee family, right? And we're adding people all the time to it.
NUPUR LALA: Hi, I'm Nupur Lala. I am the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion.
HZ: Congratulations, 25 years later. But it still counts, even though I'm late.
NUPUR LALA: It, it still counts. No, I will accept the congratulations. It means just as much now years ago.
HZ: If you saw the documentary Spellbound that followed contestants in the 1999 Spelling Bee, you saw Nupur win with the word 'logorrhea’. She is now a neuro-oncologist. This is her first time returning to Bee Week in a decade.
HZ: Are people excited to see you back?
NUPUR LALA: They are, but this is the first time I've been treated sort of as a relic. Or a piece of history.
HZ: A twentieth century champion!
NUPUR LALA: Yes. People have said that they watched Spellbound in class, but they had to say that was way before I was born, or what were things like? I've asked, I've been asked what it was like to watch certain people grow up. I think it's very funny.
HZ: Is it ever annoying that people want to talk to you about something you did when you were a teenager and not all the work you've done since then, which sounds pretty important.
NUPUR LALA: You know, it's so funny. I think that my career in medicine took so many - I think people who are physicians will relate to this, that while you're doing so much work, that's important even to get to practice independently as a doctor, it can feel rather inconsequential because you are a trainee, you are constantly aware of what you don't know. And so I used to be much more touchy about being asked about the Spelling Bee in my twenties. And now In my late thirties, I am like, “Yes! Ask me about something I felt good at and that I can actually show with a credential that I'm pretty good at.” In fact, I feel like I can speak with more confidence and expertise about the bee than brain tumors, because let's be real, we don't know what we're doing with half of brain tumours anyway.
Whenever I come back to the Spelling Bee is when I realize like why I did this. It is to me great fun and I think for all the people here. It's something that takes a lot of focus and it's also a niche interest. It felt like, you know, I would study for school, then I'd study my spelling, and I was completely absorbed, and it didn't bother me. But then I also wasn't hanging out with friends or doing other things, like, that were as fun as much. My friends were very supportive but a little bemused as to what would spur me to study spelling instead of going to the mall or the movies. I think people who've done it understand what motivates you.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: This was a transformative experience for me at a very formative age. And I want to make sure that that experience stays as good as it was for me and also continues to
HZ: Do you remember in what ways it was transformative for you at the time?
CORRIE LOEFFLER: I think it was that recognition, especially coming from a small town, rural town, that there were other kids that were like me and interested in the same types of thing. I think that that was very revelatory for me, and made me realize, "If I kind of keep getting out from where I'm from, which is also a wonderful place, but I'll be able to have even richer experiences in life."
And I think words themselves did that for me too. So learning all these words made me so curious about different parts of the world, different fields of study, especially different foods that I had never had the opportunity to try, just like reading the dictionary, you know. I was expanding my horizons in all kinds of ways, but I really think it made me, competing at a national level, especially in such a high profile way made me believe I could pretty much do anything. And what I decided I wanted to do was help other kids feel that way.
HZ: Do you feel like it's got more difficult since your era?
NUPUR LALA: Oh, absolutely. I think a big part of it is the internet is an incredible force for good in some ways and in one way, I think it made the study of spelling much more egalitarian. So now you have this field in which people can study many more words correctly - you don't have to rely on a human pronouncer, you can have a program that does it for you. You can have Zoom coaching. Just the resources at hand, and that have resulted as a function of the internet, have made this field much, much, much more prepared. I think that's been the part that has been most fascinating to me among Gen Z spellers. That their idea of how to prepare for an event where the knowledge base required is so vast is incomprehensible without internet.
HZ: There’s no lower age limit for contestants, but there is an upper one: they can’t be older than fifteen or be beyond eighth grade in school as of 31 August the previous year. Several contestants, or their parents, mentioned that they train for ten hours a day to prepare for the nationals.
HZ: Was it stressful for you? And how do you feel about the kind of stress that a lot of the contestants feel or put themselves under to practice?
CORRIE LOEFFLER: I never did that. I never did ten, but yes, there are. I really had a lot of fun with it. I was talking to my brother yesterday. Actually, he was saying that my mom used to bribe him to study with baseball cards. I didn't need bribes. I really genuinely enjoyed it. I liked finding the patterns, it's like a puzzle for me. I liked grouping words in different ways, making my own lists things. I really enjoyed that. I was the kind of kid who wanted to study a couple hours a day. So I didn't find it stressful.
I think that the part that was difficult at first was in seventh grade, I placed sixth - I tied, I didn't have this place all to myself, but I tied for sixth; and then I was coming back for my eighth grade year, which would be my final year. And I was just really, really in that space of envisioning being the champion, right?
And for me, I was very much about like: I get to be on TV, I get to be on Good Morning America, you know, all of these things, that I was just very enamored of, I guess. Just thought that it would be so glamorous and as an eighth grader with a really dorky haircut and braces, all of that was just very enticing to me. And I think I let myself really, really fall in love with it.
HZ: How much training do you remember doing?
NUPUR LALA: I did the Scripps Spelling Bee two years in a row. The first year I had no experience. I made it to the national finals and got out in the third round. Back then there used to be two days of spelling, so that was called a preliminary day. And I would say I was probably studying a good two hours per day. Then I realized in order to do better than that, I would have to study significantly more. So I studied about two to four hours a day after taking a one month break over the summer. This is from August of 1999. And then once I got to nationals, I spent anywhere from four to six hours a day until about three weeks before the competition, and then I ratcheted it up to about eight hours a day.
HZ: What motivated you to be so diligent?
NUPUR LALA: I think in hindsight, I really just enjoyed spelling. It didn't feel like work until the very end. when I was starting to have to memorize the canon of words where you just brute force memorize. It didn't feel like work.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: But it's so interesting, because every time I hear that story of "This is how much I practice," it's never like "My mom and dad told me I had to," it's always, "This was a deep driver for me, and I wanted to see what I can do." And that's how it was for me in eighth grade too, where I was sitting there and like, "Ah, I just want to show what I've learned."
HZ: Here is one of 2024’s finalists, Ananya, who started competing in spelling bees when she was eight years old.
ANANYA: You got to go to finals if you passed in your chapter. And, all my friends were like, “Oh my god, you get to speak into a microphone if you go to the finals!” And I'm like, okay, this is not about the cash prize: eight-year-old me wanted to speak into a microphone. That's what's crazy. It's gone from going here to wanting to speak into a microphone. Like, this journey has been crazy for me.
HZ: We’re talking right after the semi-finals, Ananya is still on the stage along with her fellow finalist Aditi, who you’ll hear from in a sec too.
ANANYA: The entire time, I was just scared and I really didn't know why. My legs were shaking, but nothing was going to my head. And then, when I got that word, I was going to overcomplicate it, but I just took a deep breath and I thought of the rules and I applied it and, yeah.
HZ: What was the word?
ANANYA: It was ‘rusa’. It's a Hindi word. And, yeah, I was going to put R O U S A, but I'm like, okay, let's not complicate this. And then when Judge Book said, “That is correct,” it was crazy. I didn't know what to say. This is actually my first time in finals and I've never even made it to semis.
ADITI: Yeah, me too, aame here, because I competed last year and the furthest I got was quarter-finals. So this has just been such like a like a big jump for me and I'm really happy for like all the hard work I've put in so far. I feel like getting to that goal - because like I've been super excited for the National Spelling Bee since I was like really young. I only started like competing in any kind of Spelling Bee since like 5th grade, but just knowing that I've been able to attain a level that I only dreamed about, that's incredible.
YY: My name is YY and I'm from Hartsdale, New York.
HZ: And you're a finalist.
YY: Yeah.
HZ: Congratulations.
YY: Thank you.
HZ: How are you feeling? This has been a really long day.
YY: Surprised, happy, maybe a bit shocked, and just like, yeah.
HZ: Who's with you? You've got family with you?
YY: My dad, my mom, and my grandma.
HZ: How are they doing? Because it's stressful to watch you all go through this.
YY: Nah, I'm supposed to just get to quarter-finals and that was good enough for them, so me getting to finals is already like, whoaaa.
RISHABH: I'm Rishabh Saha. I'm a speller for Merced and I'm an 8th grader.
HZ: And you're a finalist.
RISHABH: And I'm a finalist. Actually, this is my first year here. And it's also my last. It's definitely an interesting experience, for sure. The competition has been very stressful, I mean, before it started, the prospect of it, and then also actually being in it. So all I've been doing is telling myself: “However you do, that's how you do, as long as you did your best.” Because I know I could have just as easily gotten a word that I didn't know and I could not guess, and that would have knocked me out, so I just appreciate what I have, and I just move with it, you know?
HZ: Do you have your family here?
RISHABH: My dad is with me.
HZ: How’s he doing? I’ve seen a lot of stressed dads.
RISHABH: I think he's carrying a similar mindset with me. He's just watching on, and he's like, “You know what? As long as Rishabh's doing the best he can, I'm happy too.”
HZ: Do you have any tips for people who might want to compete in future years?
RISHABH: Do it if you find it fun. Do not force yourself to do it because that's the only reason I do it. I find this fun and I just do it because I enjoy it. And you know what? I've been able to come here and I've been able to meet all these like-minded people.
HZ: Did you know the words you got today, or were you guessing?
RISHABH: So the word that got me into finals, ‘daler’, I did know that one, but for a couple of the words I had in the earlier rounds, specifically in round four and round six, I did have to guess a little bit for that one. And especially round six, that one came right down to the buzzer.
HZ: Rishabh’s round 6 word was arimasp, A R I M A S P, defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “One of a mythical race of one-eyed men of Scythia represented in ancient art as in constant strife with griffins for gold guarded by the griffins.” I would not have figured that out, despite my constant strife with griffins.
A contestant probably can’t get through the Spelling Bee on rote learning of spellings alone: they tend also to have knowledge of etymology, and will use it to work out the spelling of a word they don’t know. So when they get it wrong, it’s usually not because they made a silly mistake. They're all making very sensible mistakes.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: Absolutely. And so many this year that missed just by one letter and that's where you're like, Ugh.
HZ: Chilling.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: That's what it is. Right? Like I worked so hard. I want to be able to show everybody everything that I've learned. And it's just this one darn word that gets in your way of doing that. The way that the spelling bee works, there's so much just luck involved. And that is so frustrating, but you know, it's also kind of what makes the spelling bee so nail-bitingly compelling.
I had the chance this year to sit in with my brother at the host desk for part of the preliminaries. I'm usually, you know, up in the front of the competition, behind the scenes kind of thing, where it's just like so intense and focused on that. But this year, for the first time, I had the chance to sit and watch some of the competition with him, so you're like sitting at the host desk, watching a monitor, and between spellings, like, saying a little something about it. And I was like, “Wow, I love watching this!” I’d kind of forgotten how much fun it is just to watch it and, and see how much personality comes through from the kids in this simple, formulaic transaction that happens between the officials and the speller. There's so much more going on than just that. And that drama of the vicissitudes of fate when it comes to what word you're going to get, you know, like that is something unique to the Spelling Bee, I think.
NUPUR LALA: Oh, this is so funny. I recently was visiting a classroom - this is of a friend's son - and one kid asked me what the word was that knocked me out the year before. And the word is 'commination'. It means a warning. And I think the only time I have seen it used was in the book in which that word is cited. It's an Aldous Huxley novel, Point Counterpoint. And I thought this word was difficult. And as soon as I say it, a child in the class just rattles it off right away and spells it perfectly.
HZ: You walked so they could run.
NUPUR LALA: That's what I say, right? But, yeah, it's funny how certain things never lose their sting, and that word didn't.
HZ: What relationship do you have with the word that knocked you out?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I hate it.
HZ: This is Charlotte Walsh, who placed second in the 2023 Bee.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: In the sense of words to miss, it was a hard word, it's not like I missed a super easy word; so I'm kind of glad about that. The word is deviely, it's spelled D-A-V-I-E-L-Y and every time someone's like, “What word did you get out on?” and I say “daviely” and they're like, “That's not even a real word. What does it mean?” I say, “Oh, it means ‘listlessly’,” and they're like, “What does 'listlessly' mean?” I'm like, “Can you please leave me alone?”
HZ: When a contestant answers incorrectly, they hear the ding of the bell.
[montage of bells dinging in the Spelling Bee after contestants spell a word wrong. Then the pronouncer says the correct spelling]
NUPUR LALA: You know what? It is still ever so slightly triggering. Over time it has lost its resonance - no pun intended - a little bit, but yeah, it's still hard to hear.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: One time I was out in public and someone played this sound and I was like, I actually jumped. I was like, “Whoa, what did I get wrong?”
HZ: Wow, so you need like a desensitization exercise for bells.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I hate that sound, but I would want to be in charge of ringing it. I don't know why. I just I feel like it would be a really fun job.
DEV SHAH: I would love to bring a bell and just like anytime someone annoys me, I'm like “Ding! Goodbye.”
HZ: I asked 2024 finalists Aditi and Ananya about how they had felt in previous years when they got knocked out of the competition.
ADITI: Honestly, to say the least, like, I'm not even gonna sugarcoat it: terrible. Yeah. Cause the, the sound of the bell is such a hard thing to hear. Just like, the disappointment of hearing the bell is a lot. So yeah, I was pretty disappointed last year.
ANANYA: Yeah, I was… Okay, I feel like I studied more, I made sure that I would not hear that bell again. Whenever I heard that bell, I would just go straight to crying, but now whenever I hear a bell, it's just more mellowed. I just don't start bursting out into tears, because I know how that feels. I know that you can always do another one. There's always like another chance that's coming out for you. That's why it's a bell and not a buzzer: it's not loud. It's just a small ding to remind you that it's not the end of the world.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: I ended up really flaming out my eighth grade year. I got out in the second round on the word ‘dispel’, which probably you wrote in an email a couple days ago, right? This is just a common word. I spelled it like ‘spell’ and I was like, “I'm right. I'm just going to go back and sit down,” and I heard the bell and I was so sad. But that experience, I have drawn on forever, of bouncing back from that disappointment and coming back and watching the rest of the competition, and cheering on all the friends that I had made, which is the reason that I loved this in the first place - that social aspect, you know, celebrating with all of them at the end of the week, we have a big party here on Friday night; and leaving still feeling like all of that journey to that place had done so much for me. And,we talk about resilience a lot now. I don't think we talked about it back then, really, in the mid-1990s.
HZ: No, no, no, no, no, no - it was just, get through by suppressing your feelings.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: Right, exactly.
HZ: What could go wrong?
CORRIE LOEFFLER: But yeah, I feel like I learned something. That's part of that transformation too, is that growth.
HZ: Each of the spellers eliminated in the semi-finals and finals received a beautiful speech from head judge Mary Brooks or backup head judge Kavya Shivashankar, commending the qualities they exhibited during their Bee journey, and noting their other interests and giving them encouragement for what they may do in the future, spelling or not. Which to me seemed a very thoughtful way to celebate each contestant upon their exit.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: That was actually an outgrowth of the COVID era. In 2021, we had to do a hybrid virtual and then in-person model for our national finals. So the first three segments of our competition were all virtual. During the beginning of the competition, in the preliminaries, we were noticing, wow, this just feels so cold when it's just like, “You're wrong!” and then it's like, “bloop!” like the little video goes off of that kid. And there's no clapping for them the way every kid who misspells on our stage, they get clapped off, we're celebrating the fact that they made it there - the whole audience is. But in a virtual environment, that wasn't there.
So we thought, okay, whoever's the head judge at that moment, which I believe it was Mary for almost all of the virtual competition: “We need you to say something.” And then it just kind of grew from there. And she started really getting to know the kids and putting that personal touch on everything that she says to them. Mary and Kavya, they pay attention to the kids over the years. We get a lot of information about them from them, but they try to make sure they know about each one of these kids.
And you can tell it's a special moment for them. The reality of this competition is that one kid is going to win. You know, half the kids in the competition are out on the first day. There's two more days of competition, you're really at the beginning of the week, you've got this whole week to experience and that collective experience for those, this year, 244 kids who aren't going to win, of being able to process that at the same time, realize it's okay, realize there are always going to be more opportunities: I think that's really a special thing that we're able to provide.
HZ: Is there like a duty of care to the kids? I think we're more aware now of psychology.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: Yeah, absolutely. We talk a lot in the lead up to the Bee about envisioning both outcomes for yourself, talking about what it's going to be like when the bell rings. What, what you feel, how you talk through it with your parents, how you experience it with people around you, and what that can end up meaning for you. We try to have our alums every year to contribute to that series of communications, so the kids who competed the previous year coming back and sharing their experiences to help them in the lead up. I actually have had multiple conversations with multiple different outlets about kind of mental fitness training, and also just the social emotional learning aspect of all of this. We don't have a formal program for it yet, but it's on my to-do list.
NUPUR LALA: Especially as I get older and I come back to this event that it's so much meaning for my family, when we were all a lot younger, I think seeing how all of this takes a village, that every kid here, that there was somebody supporting along the way: that feels more meaningful now than it ever did. Or not - I mean, it's always been meaningful, but I think that that has been more apparent to me coming back.
HZ: The contestants' support for each other was also on display. Whenever one completed their turn - if they succeeded, they return to their seat on stage, and if they were eliminated, they walk off stage - the other spellers would high five them as they passed.
RISHABH: For me actually, it's kind of my substitute for a good luck charm. I feel like displaying that kind of sportsmanship will in turn help me out, make my mindset better, if nothing else. I just feel like that helps me in the Bee.
ADITI: Yeah. I think the empathy that's involved in the spelling bee, putting yourself in other people's shoes, because my heart hurts for people that end up having to hear the bell. I'm always really happy and excited for people that are still moving through. And I mean, I think the thing is like, it's not Your enemy is the dictionary. Like, we all hate the dictionary. Like, not each other. So that's like, really important.
HZ: And the dictionary doesn't even know you hate it, so you're not hurting the dictionary either.
ANANYA: You're hurting an inanimate object, that doesn't really convey any emotions.
HZ: I really love seeing the kids being so supportive of each other on the stage. Did you have that vibe in your cohort?
NUPUR LALA: Oh, no, no, no. But I think that's something that has really changed and I do wonder whether, yeah, society has on the whole, focused a lot more on empathy and support and I think that is a wonderful thing, and we see it on stage. And I love that cultural shift. I admit it was a little bit more competitive, or there was a sense of this being maybe more important than what it was to win. We were maybe not yet mature enough to see the lessons that are now much more readily apparent as adults. So we were not as sweet to each other; but seeing the kids hug each other as they ran off stage: that was really touching. We all became very good friends by the end of the week. But yeah, I think there was a greater competitive edge, with us older millennials spelling as teenagers.
HZ: Yeah, it was also just, I think, a different time of making kids prove their value in opposition to each other, rather than in parallel. Or in my upbringing it was.
NUPUR LALA: No, that's beautiful, that's exactly right, that's beautifully put.
HZ: Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that, from a words champion.
HZ: My childhood was very much arranged around competing against our peers: from age seven, twice a year, my school would do something called Orders, which ranked every child in each of our subjects as well as overall in our year. So our value was very much defined as relative to our competitors, and the results determined for the next six months how worthy I was of my parents' love. Before coming to the Spelling Bee, I was worried about kids being in such an intense competition: it is televised, there are big prizes at stake, they have to invest so much time and effort... But it makes all the difference that they're not competing with each other; the success or failure of a speller is not contingent on that of another.
CORRIE LOEFFLER: I think what I've really tried to do in my time with the Bee, and especially in the last two years, is examine the week from the beginning, the lens of: obviously we have this competition to do, obviously we have these multi-million-dollar broadcast to make as well - which is a lot, and we have to focus on that. But how do we also make sure we're really focusing on the experience of every single student, in making sure that they're having a fun and transformative week too? So it's not just about what you see out there in the world, it's about what happens here.
And I like to emphasize with my staff - which, we have about a hundred people who work this event during the week - the most memorable thing for these kids is going to be the connections that you make with them, that you talk to them like real people, get to know them, find out what's so unique about them and that makes the experience better for the kid and better for you and all of those personal touches: that's what I'm really passionate about continuing to change.
HZ: As a child, to be treated with respect and afforded gravitas? Yeah, I would have memorised a dictionary to get that.
When someone wins the Spelling Bee, they can’t compete again, so they really do go out of their spelling careers on a high.
NUPUR LALA: You know, it's funny: the day after I won, one would think that that would be the single happiest day of my life. And it was until that point, but there was also this sinking feeling where I was wondering what would I do with my time and that dissipated quite quickly because high school was on the horizon, but yeah, it's something where maybe that was the first time I experienced what would be called now as existential dread.
HZ: How long did it take to feel reconciled to that?
NUPUR LALA: Maybe this reflects a lack of depth, but I think in about a week or so, I had moved on to envisioning high school. I also think, at the time, we were actually preparing to move across states. And so I think that there were other challenges that were imminent that distracted me.
DEV SHAH: I'm Dev Shah. I'm the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. To be honest, I have been sad for a year. Because really, I used to spend - some days I would spend 8 to 10 hours. It was a lot of work, and I enjoyed it, but at the same time it felt at times really stressful. And I took a lot of it for granted and I have all this time; and I feel like, in a sense, worthless. I know that's kind of weird, that I'm a Spelling Bee champion, but you realize that spelling is not going to last forever. And this one thing that you took for granted from second to eighth grade is more of a chapter, not your life. So it's hard to differentiate between what you do and who you are.
HZ: That is a lot to take on, at your age particularly.
DEV SHAH: I mean, most spellers are mature, right?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I'm not sure if most spellers are mature or if being in Spelling Bees helps you mature, but by the time that people come out of spelling in 8th grade, they're definitely changed people. Like the 8th graders I know this year, who are recently retired spellers or about to retire tomorrow, have changed so much since I've known them. I think spelling is kind of a transformative experience in that way.
HZ: I’m talking with Dev and Charlotte Walsh together, the night before this year’s finals; they’re very close friends since placing first and second in the 2023 Spelling Bee.
DEV SHAH: So do you, like, go through what I'm going through, though?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I don't know what you mean.
DEV SHAH: Just, you have all this spelling time, and then now it's gone.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I dealt with that a lot over the summer, but I've been filling my time up pretty well. I had a lot of responsibilities to take on my 8th grade year in addition to spelling: my 8th grade year, so my last year of middle school, my parents decided that I should do three AP exams and test for my black belt, and also get confirmed in the Catholic Church. At first I was nervous about what to do with my spelling time and I felt that there was a lot of time left, but I was able to fill it up pretty quickly with a lot of other stuff to do, which I guess is a blessing and a curse.
HZ: But what you seem to be saying, Dev, is like: “Who am I now that I'm no longer an active speller? I might be a champion, but I'm not doing the thing anymore.”
DEV SHAH: Exactly. I just - I see a lot of people in high school and, you know, spellers are a special group of people. From second to eighth grade, at least that's how it goes for a lot of spellers, they add purpose, and not a lot of kids have that, right? I took all of the time for granted, all the code, all this preparation, all these Bees: I never knew it was gonna end.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: This is my study schedule, like I'm doing these words then I'm doing these then and once I get through that I have to do this - and then all of a sudden, like just randomly on a Thursday night, you don't have to do it anymore ever.
DEV SHAH: But then again, don't you feel like - do you feel sad? I feel like you're a bit excited about it.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I am sad about it because spelling was a really important part of who I am, but I am thankful for the extra time in a way, because I think that spelling doesn't necessarily have to end when you finish Scripps. There's a lot of ways to still be involved with the community, which is why it's not super heartbreaking for me is because I know I can come back and I have connections that will last me a while.
DEV SHAH: That's true. Like, honestly… it's not the same though. Like we were talking about this when we saw the spellers, the semi-finals, we were like, “That was us last year,” when we saw the stage. But I have to be honest, I'm kind of glad that I don't really have to go through any of the failures again.
HZ: Right, you don't have to prove yourself.
DEV SHAH: I mean, I never really saw it as proving myself in the last year. We were just having fun, as well with lots of people.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I was a little bit nervous.
DEV SHAH: I was nervous too. I was nervous too, for sure.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I think a lot of people don't realize how scary it is, and sitting in the audience today, I kind of realized that because it looked a lot less scary from the audience than it does when you're actually there. But when you're on stage the lights are so bright and there's a whole like pit full of cameras pointed up at you and you can hear them clicking every time you like say a letter. And the audience actually knows when you get the wrong word, like when you say the wrong letter, they know before you do; and so it's so much stressful to actually be there than it like looks so it's a lot of pressure.
DEV SHAH: I remember even if I spelled correctly, I would go back to my chair and my legs would just shake uncontrollably.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: And it's so bright. It's so bright on stage. They need it for good lighting and it looks beautiful on camera. But it is so bright and it's so overwhelming.
DEV SHAH: I kind of like it because it only puts Dr. Bailly into perspective when we think about it.
HZ: Dr Jacques Bailly is the head pronouncer, who delivers the words to the spellers. He sits with the judges and other Bee officials in an enclosure in front of the audience, facing the contestants on stage.
DEV SHAH: It’s only the pronouncer that you see.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: But that's scary!
DEV SHAH: That's true. That's why it scares me. Would you rather want a thousand people looking at you or just one person?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: There are a thousand people looking at me, I just can't see them back!
HZ: What motivated the two of you to work so hard to achieve this objective? Like, what were the things driving you to do that?
DEV SHAH: Two things in general. The community. Everyone here is just so supportive. And the second thing: passion. A lot of people don't realize, spelling words is much more than spelling, right Charlotte?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: Right. Spelling words is so much fun when you realize that you have a great community behind you and you have like a love for learning and making connections. It's a really unique experience, and I'm really really grateful for it.
DEV SHAH: Spelling is about roots, language. I genuinely loved getting a word I didn't know and having all this information - it was like a detective case: you have the language of origin, the definition, alternate pronunciations, roots; it's like witnesses and having details to a crime scene, forensics. And, you know, it was just me piecing out together, doing what I love, in front of millions of people, shining on a stage, cameras, and still getting a lot from it.
HZ: And you got to do all that detective work in ninety seconds.
DEV SHAH: Exactly. So in 2022, the year before I won, I got out on my regional Bee, I couldn't even qualify. So I was like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? But my mom was very supportive and she was like, “Try, because you'll regret it forever if you don't do it.” I'd rather be uncomfortable for a year, knowing that I might lose than just going for the rest of my life being like, wait, I could have won.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: That's true, because even if you don't do as well as you like in Scripps, you at least know that you you got there and you did it. And that's why, like, I wanted to give up in my 8th grade year too, just because of so much that I had on my plate. But I realized that I would definitely regret it, because I would never know how I would have done.
HZ: Each of the finalists receives some prize money from the Scripps Spelling Bee, the amount rising the higher they are placed; the runner-up gets $25,000, the champion gets $50,000, plus other money and prizes from some of the Bee’s partner organisations.
HZ: Was the prize money important?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: It really wasn't important at all. It, I didn't even think about it. I didn't think I was gonna make it as far as I did, but when I considered the possibility of winning or being runner up, I didn't think about the prize money. I just thought about like how cool it would be.
DEV SHAH: I was really focused, my main thing was taking it one round at a time because preliminaries, quarter-finals, semi-finals, finals, there's a regional Bee - you have to get through so much, so you should just take it one step at a time. Like in round two, I wasn't like, “What am I gonna do with $50,000?” I was like, “Am I gonna make it through this round?”
CHARLOTTE WALSH: When I was on the stage for round three, I swear to God, like, twenty-five grand was the last thing from my mind. I was like, “I don't think I'm gonna get this right.”
DEV SHAH: And I remember because after I won, you came on stage and you were like, “What are you gonna do with $50,000?” I was like, “What are you gonna do with $25,000?” And you were like, “Oh my gosh!”
CHARLOTTE WALSH: Yeah! And I was like, “I’ve got 25 grand?!?” We were shocked about it.
DEV SHAH: We were shocked. It was a fever dream. It was a really good fever dream.
HZ: Does it still feel like that?
DEV SHAH: Yeah. This one feels like a lucid dream.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: This one's weird. We're supposed to be on stage, first of all.
DEV SHAH: When you think about it, could you really do the spelling bee again right now?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: Honestly? Probably not. Like I know we're reminiscing about it, and I would love to relive the finals of last year - or like, you know, all last year, I'd love to relive it. But I don't know if I could even do it again right now. There's a reason why it doesn't carry into high school - as much as people would like it to, there's a reason why it doesn't. There's a lot to do in high school.
DEV SHAH: But like, I'm talking about the studying, the online bees, dealing with so many people in the spelling community. Like could we do that again with another thing right now?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I don't know. I guess it depends on the thing. I mean we were passionate about spelling, I'm sure we could be passionate about something else. I think that we definitely could find a purpose. There's a lot of things to get excited about. I think that I could definitely like be passionate and carry that same sense of passion and purpose into something else.
DEV SHAH: It's what I dreamed of - I always dreamed of getting rid of spelling, but then I don't want to now. I think the biggest thing is that after being the top at something, now we're at ground zero. And we have to start over.
HZ: Have you warned any of them that the day after the final, you might be feeling this void?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I don't know if you could even warn someone about that. 'cause you warned them. I was warned about it.
DEV SHAH: No one told me. I faced all of this.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: No, they were like, “Oh, you're gonna graduate and there's gonna be this void.” I did not believe them. I was like, “no way.”
DEV SHAH: It hit me so hard because I was like in all this media, so I was caught up in the moment and then suddenly after two months it dies down, right? You're like, “Wait, what?” I was in this whirlwind for two months and then now I'm settled - but I'm not really settled. What I expected, if, when I won, all my problems would go away, and it would be like a whole new world. Which it was, but for two months - and like, I guess for a year. But now it's settling back down.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: It's so weird, because it's like being Miss America.
DEV SHAH: This is what you dream about that you like finally made it the top. But at the same time, it's like you're kind of saying goodbye to a chapter of your life.
HZ: But then… you get another one. A different one.
DEV SHAH: That's true. And you know, the hardest part though is because for so long I had this purpose, sense of purpose - purpose and a sense of purpose. Aand without those two you're like, is this meaningless?
HZ: But you also might need longer than a year to find that.
DEV SHAH: [catching sight of HZ’s Allusionist enamel pin] Love that, by the way.
HZ: Are there things that you enjoy doing, even if you're not very good at them? Like, do you, are you able to allow yourself to do things that you're mediocre at?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I need to get better at that. Like I started taking voice lessons this year cause I've been really interested in singing my whole life, but I'm not very good at it. and I, I like always come home from voice lessons and I was like, I am so bad at this. There's no reason to do it. But there is a reason to do it: because it's fun. And I actually like enjoy it, even though I'm a terrible singer and you're never going to catch me singing anything, but it kind of doing that kind of taught me that like, like, it's okay to do something that you're not like great at. Like I still improve from the start of the year.
DEV SHAH: At this point, I'm just like exploring. I'm doing whatever. I hope I find a purpose. I'm trying to find writing. I love to learn more languages. I'm learning Spanish, it's going well. It's going well. So I hope I learn languages. I hope I can get better at the cello. I am part of the orchestra. So I'm finding my way slowly, but surely.
HZ: The 2024 champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee is 12-year-old Bruhat Soma, thus his spelling career is complete. So I asked him what he thought he might do with the time he had been spending on spelling training.
BRUHAT: Pretty much enjoying it, I guess. Like, I don't really have anything planned for the summer. But yeah, pretty much relaxing. Maybe watching a bit of basketball and stuff. Because, like, I'm into that stuff.
HZ: Are the other people that have been Bee finalists in the past, did they have any advice for you, like navigating this transitional time?
DEV SHAH: I talked to so many Bee finalists, have you?
CHARLOTTE WALSH: So many. They're really, like, inspirational.
DEV SHAH: Haaa! Are you for real?!
CHARLOTTE WALSH: They are!
DEV SHAH: Okay. There are so many. I talked to so many champions. They felt the same thing. They felt this void and this one year or two years where they're like, “What even is this?” And, you know, I'm getting used to high school - I'm not even getting used to it. I'm still like, “What is this world where there's no purpose or meaning?” And I hope I find it, but. It's important to realize that even if I do find another purpose, that doesn't mean I'm gonna know who I am.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: But to anyone else who's going through the same thing, it's important not to get caught up on not knowing who you are, because no one really knows who they are. And we are like 15, so I think there's a lot of time to figure it out. And even though there is like a huge empty place where spelling used to be, and it's okay if nothing ever fills that, but it's like, eventually, it's less apparent that there's an empty place there, even if there always will be. I got runner-up and now I’m challenging myself to do something even cooler, because I don't want to peak in eighth grade, I want to keep getting like awesome and I want to have a lot of things to look back on, not just this.
DEV SHAH: That's so true. And you shouldn't be afraid of failure. Like, I feel like I was afraid of failure. Failure is going to happen, but you shouldn't be afraid of it.
HZ: I wanted Nupur Lala’s take on all this, with her win now 25 years behind her.
HZ: You get really good at a thing that doesn't necessarily directly become something you do in your adult life, but does have resonance and impact on your adult life. How do you feel that your excellence at spelling has informed your adulthood or been useful at all?
NUPUR LALA: I think of late, it's sort of helped me realize something that I was chasing throughout my adult life that I feel like very recently I have found what the spelling bee also gave me - aside from getting to study language at that depth, which I loved - was this opportunity to solve puzzles that require both a high level of base knowledge, but also pattern recognition and sometimes just intuition when you're spelling at a mic. Because if there's one competition that I've seen that really tests the limits of human memory, it is the Spelling Bee.
CHARLOTTE WALSH: I definitely took the skills that I learned from spelling into my academic career. Spelling taught me how to like study really hard for a long period of time, and the skills that I took from spelling and learning how to prepare for a spelling bee really helps you finish a lot of homework.
NUPUR LALA: And so I very recently found that in my sub specialties - so I'm a neuro-oncologist in my adult life, and I'll soon be practicing independently as one. I've just finished fellowship. And that's where I felt a little bit like that feeling I've been chasing and I've been looking for in various career exploits throughout my adult life, because I took a little while to decide on what I wanted to do, I'd finally found, as a neuro-oncologist. And so I think that's where the Spelling Bee had a very deep influence. I wanted to feel the way that I did while studying words, but get to do that every day and get paid for it.
HZ: Getting paid for it sounds great. But also, lots of long, difficult words for you to have to use.
NUPUR LALA: All the time - and I will say that there was definitely a full circle moment yesterday, hearing words like ‘alteplase’ or ‘mucormycosis’, things that I had to study in order to be a practicing doctor, being asked at a spelling bee.
HZ: Yesterday, 'rood' came up, and I studied medieval English poetry, so I was like, “That's the one I can do!” And the kid got it wrong.
NUPUR LALA: And I got it wrong too. That was a hard word.
HZ: Well, my degree was otherwise pretty useless, but at least I would have got through that round if that'd been… no, I would have got knocked out way earlier anyway.
HZ: I asked Aditi and Ananya what they would take from competing in the Spelling Bee.
ADITI: I have a better work ethic, better time management, I think I'm better at public speaking just by the amount of interviews. I think that also, like, just not being too afraid to accept failure. Because that's such an important thing in the Spelling Bee, because it's like, only one person is gonna take home this trophy, and that might not be you.
ANANYA: I feel like I'm definitely going to improve my character. In spelling bees, I've always been cheering for other people. And never cheering for myself and I feel like maybe I can stop cheering on the sidelines and actually start cheering for myself.
ADITI: It's like that increased self confidence, like you feel so much better about yourself.
ANANYA: Yeah.
NUPUR LALA: The one piece of advice that I would give is just focus on the next word. If you can learn to focus on the task ahead of you, no matter what you do: tonight, tomorrow, the rest of your life, things have a way of working out as they should.
HZ: That's comforting. And also, if you feel the void after, it's okay to feel that.
NUPUR LALA: I think so. In fact, I would say that that to me is a reflection of effort and dedication. And if you can, you know, if you can employ those sorts of qualities in whatever you do, you will be fine. Life will be fulfilling. It may not be what you predicted, but it will certainly be rich and meaningful.
Something fun for me specifically about watching the spelling bee is that I knew a few of the words because they had come up as our randomly selected words from the dictionary. So pay attention and file these away for future spelling sports.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is… anserine.
Anserine. In spelling bee parlance: can I get the information please?
anserine, adjective: of or like a goose.
A-N-S-E-R-I-N-E: Anserine.
Try using it in an email today.
In order of appearance, you heard from Corrie Loeffler, Nupur Lala, Aditi Muthukumar, Ananya Prassanna, YY Laing, Rishabh Saha, Charlotte Walsh, Dev Shah and Bruhat Soma. Thanks also to Becca McCarter, Ben Zimmer and Jane Solomon. There should be more Spelling Bee next episode.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. The music is by Martin Austwick of PaleBirdMusic.com.
Our ad partner is Multitude. If you want to advertise on this show, and hear me come up with an original ad for your product every time - that people often don’t skip, they listen to by choice? The power! - contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads.
And you can hear or read every episode, get links to more information about the topics, and see the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, and links to upcoming events, and become a member of the allusioverse to read my beecaps and other perks, all at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
