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There will be no fidgeting at the National Spelling Bee microphone, no banter with pronouncer Jacques Bailly, no pointed questions about definitions or languages of origin, no dreaded bell that signals a misspelled word. This year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee was canceled Tuesday, the latest beloved public event to be scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic. The bee will return next year, Scripps said, but that’s little comfort to the eighth-graders who are missing out on their last shot at the national stage. Scripps will not change eligibility requirements for the next bee, which is scheduled for June 1-3, 2021....

... The first national spelling bee was held in 1925, and this year's competition will feature 273 spellers from the U.S. and around the world. Interestingly, English is not even the first language of 21 of those spellers, and Scripps reports that 102 of the contestants speak other languages, from Hebrew to Hindi. Given this amazing diversity united under one language, the author of America's first dictionary and the originator of uniform spelling in America (which makes the Bee possible!) would be proud. That's Noah Webster, to whom the Bee owes its official dictionary, "Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary." Webster...

Meet Kavya Shivashankar, the National Spelling Bee winner. She can spell really well for a 7th grade girl, which for some reason got me thinking about Barack Obama. Unfortunately our president is not the brightest student. She won the National Spelling Bee for correctly spelling “Laodicean” after spelling a whole bunch of really long words correctly before. Kavya does not make rookie mistakes and is testament to the high-achieving American Dream. As a brief biography, Kavya Shivashankar is 13-years old from Blue State Kansas in small town of Olathe. This was her forth year in a row at the National...

Evan O'Dorney always eats fish before his spelling bees. The brain food apparently has served him well: He's the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. The 13-year-old from Danville, Calif., aced "serrefine" Thursday night to become the last youngster standing at the 80th annual bee. He won a tense duel with Nate Gartke of Spruce Grove, Alberta, who was trying to become the first Canadian to win the bee. Evan won a trophy and a $35,000 prize, plus a $5,000 scholarship, a $2,500 savings bond and a set of reference works. He said he knew how to spell the winning...

Had Jake Plummer come along at a different time, it wouldn't be difficult imagining him driving a decorated Volkswagen bus, wearing a tie-dyed shirt, sporting long hair and a scruffy beard, picking up buddies across the country on his way to Woodstock. No, that wouldn't be a fair vision. ************* The other day, Plummer was waiting to order his dinner at Qdoba when he noticed a little girl smiling at him. "I look over at her and I said, 'Hey, what are you getting?"' Plummer said. "And she just laughed. For me to evoke that kind of response of that...

WASHINGTON - Seventh-grader Tyler Curtis says he's never had to worry much about doing well at his studies, and he's not about to start now. That's saying something. Tyler is facing 272 of the country's best young spellers — and the biggest prize ever — at the 78th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee running Wednesday and Thursday. "It would be nice to win," the 13-year-old from Camden, Tenn., said Tuesday. "But I'm not going to get all stressed out over it." His competitors include 145 boys and 127 girls aged 9 to 14, mostly from around the country and U.S....