Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion So is everyone watching the National Spelling Bee?

Looks like Encyclopedia Britannica is still involved. This is from today's HuffPo article on the winner:

"Nandipati's prize haul includes $30,000 in cash, a trophy, a $2,500 savings bond, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works from the Encyclopedia Britannica and an online language course."

Catching a football or hitting a baseball isn't very transferable, either, but people still turn out to watch.

I tried to show DS9 how much work those kids put into their spelling. "Look, son, this kid says he studies 52 pages of the dictionary every day." "Did you see that? She said she studied 6 hours a day for this!"

He seems to think that native talent will be enough.

He didn't have to worry about it this year, because our school only sent the middle school champ to state. There was some odd thing involving a neighboring school district not hosting regionals or whatever it was, so that our district only had one spot for someone. I don't know quite how it all works.

It was streaming on the net via ESPN3 only IF you have certain cable providers. As far as we could find, it was not available to stream (or replay the day after) for anyone who did not have a cable provider on the specific list with ESPN3 access. We even tried to wheedle my dad's AT&T password out of him because it is on the list (he lives far away, so we could not go to his house), but he did not know it. Frustrating that they have limited who can watch to only those who can afford (or want) cable tv.

You know, they gave that weird message and I was worried but then it came up anyway. We don't have those cable providers. ?? However, my DSL comes from AT &T.

The winner was Indian-American again. An article discussing why is

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/06/why_are_indian_kids_so_good_at_spelling.html
Why Are Indian Kids So Good at Spelling?
Because they have their own minor-league spelling bee circuit.
By Ben Paynter
Slate
Posted Friday, June 1, 2012, at 10:50 AM ET

Indians do well at the National Geography Bee http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3456602.ece for similar reasons .

ultramarina, that must be why you were able to watch... I went to the Scripps website and sent them a message via the contact option there to let them know how disappointed we were that the finals were only available on cable (and only cable providers that have a contract with a sports network... definitely ironic). They replied and said "thanks for the feedback". Maybe next year it will be back... but often those contracts are multiyear.