Let’s Go B-A-N-A-N-A-S: Annual National Spelling Bee Starts Today

If only Gwen Stefani were forced to compete against this year's 281 contestants ...

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It’s that time of year again. Today marks the beginning of the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, an intense, three-day competition in which brave kids march into the limelight near Washington, D.C.—and make average American adults feel like a bunch of dum-dums.

Among the 281 contestants at the 86th annual event will be Tara Singh of Louisville, Ky., who clocks in at eight years old—as in the age most of us learned that there were these things called fractions. But young Tara is an anomaly. The oldest contestants are 14, and the vast majority, 89%, are between the ages of 12 and 14. The spellers hail from all 50 states, as well as American territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico. About two-fifths speak more than one language, an impressive stat that also helps explain why their tongues are so darn nimble.

The competition, run by media outfits including the E.W. Scripps Company and various local newspapers, has two big changes this year. One is that the contestants will not only be asked to spell words on stage, but also to define them in computer-based tests off-stage. The other is that the on-stage portion will have quick-fire eliminations. Whereas in previous years, contestants got a second chance if they misspelled a word, this year one misstep will come with an invitation to take a seat for good. Both updates should make the competition more difficult and, officials say, help encourage a more robust knowledge of the English language—the spelling bee’s central mission.

On Tuesday morning, the contestants were grilled on spelling and definitions via computer. All the contestants will then move on to live grilling Wednesday, which ESPN3 will broadcast starting at 8 a.m. ET. ESPN2 will air the semi-finals, starting Thursday at 2 p.m., and ESPN will take the finals that day at 8 p.m. (A bee spokeswoman says that only the preliminaries will be streamed live online, here.)

Take the video quiz at the top of this post to see how you’d fare. Then peruse the list below of past winners, as well as their home states and winning words, since 2003. And remember: We can’t all be brilliant spellers. Otherwise the bees would last forever:

2003 pococurante Sai R. Gunturi Texas
2004 autochthonous David Tidmarsh Indiana
2005 appoggiatura Anurag Kashyap California
2006 Ursprache Kerry Close New Jersey
2007 serrefine Evan M. O’Dorney California
2008 guerdon Sameer Mishra Indiana
2009 Laodicean Kavya Shivashankar Kansas
2010 stromuhr Anamika Veeramani Ohio
2011 cymotrichous Sukanya Roy Pennsylvania
2012 guetapens Snigdha Nandipati California