Major changes are coming to the Scripps National Spelling Bee this year following backlash over last year's abrupt finale. Scripps has dropped its rule requiring a rapid-fire "spell-off" tiebreaker when the finals push up against the end of their scheduled TV slot. Now, judges can let regular competition continue into overtime, removing the pressure to abruptly switch formats if time runs short, the AP reports.
Last year, the spell-off decided the winner without a traditional head-to-head showdown between the final two spellers, a move that drew criticism from former champions and longtime fans. The 2023 champ, Bruhat Soma, had spent months preparing for the spell-off and handily won. Runner-up Faizan Zaki returns this year, eager for another shot at the trophy. The spell-off was first introduced in 2022 and immediately drew attention: that year, the finalists had already battled through a marathon stretch before the tiebreaker was used. In 2019, before the introduction of the spell-off, the bee famously ended in an eight-way tie.
"Once you reach a certain point in the finals, the drama is really in watching the spellers take on the dictionary word by word," spelling coach Scott Remer, who works with Faizan, tells the AP. "Traditionally, the idea behind the spelling bee has been that you use the information you're given, you gather the clues, you process the information, you think about the word, and then you take all of that synthesis of information and you provide a spelling. The spell-off obviously tests a different set of skills." Another rule change brings back the written test in the preliminaries, a feature last used during the 2010s. Spellers who make it through the first onstage round now face a 40-question written test to help narrow the field and calibrate word difficulty for later rounds. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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