PinnedUpdated May 29, 2025, 6:41 p.m. ETIt took a required, 90-second spell-off — a fast-and-furious tiebreaking round that rewards speed as much as accuracy — to crown last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.Now that the spell-off is optional, it remains to be seen what nail-biting moments will decide this year’s winner.Stay tuned here, as we begin live coverage of the final round of the intense competition that began on Tuesday in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington. The week got underway with 243 contestants from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. Spellers also hailed from the Bahamas, Canada, Germany, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria. There were 178 first-timers, and about 30 percent of all contestants were 14 (the youngest was 8).The bee is celebrating its 100th anniversary, but it was canceled four times — from 1943 to 1945 because of World War II, and in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. There have been 109 champions, 56 boys and 53 girls. The outsize number stems, in large part, from an eight-way tie in 2019.2024 winner: It will be hard to top the intensity of last year, when 12-year-old Bruhat Soma of St. Petersburg, Fla., defeated Faizan Zaki of Plano, Texas, in the competition’s second-ever spell-off. The champion wins a $50,000 cash prize, but there are also cash rewards for the next five finishers.How to watch: The final round begins at 8 p.m. Eastern time. We’ll be covering the competition live here, and it will be broadcast on Scripps networks, including ION and Bounce. Scripps can direct you to the specific channel in your area at spellingbee.com/watch. Viewers can also watch directly on the spelling bee’s website.A rules refresher: In the final, spellers will have 90 seconds to correctly spell a word once it has been pronounced. They are allowed to ask the pronouncer for a definition; a part of speech; to use the word in a sentence; its language of origin; alternate pronunciations; or to repeat the word. The bee’s official source is Merriam-Webster Unabridged.May 29, 2025, 7:00 p.m. ETBruhat Soma left, of St. Petersburg, Fla., after winning the second-ever spell-off at the Scripps National Spelling Bee last year.Credit...Ting Shen for The New York TimesThe “spell-off” tiebreaker that swiftly concluded last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee won’t be required if the competition runs long this year, giving contestants more opportunities to participate in traditional rounds of spelling at the discretion of the judges.The spell-off — a lightning round in which contestants must spell as many words as possible in 90 seconds — was introduced in 2021 as a mandatory way to end the contest. It has only been used twice, in 2022 and 2024. This year, the spell-off will be an optional tool for judges to use should the contest run long on Thursday night.“In 2019, we had eight champions, which was a lot. That happened around midnight, so the kids were really up pretty far past their bedtime at that point. And, being a prime-time broadcast in a specific window, we need a way to end the competition if we need to,” said Corrie Loeffler, executive director of the spelling bee.During a regular spelling round, contestants have 90 seconds to spell one word. They can use that time to ask the judges for information such as a word’s origin, definition or pronunciation. In the spell-off, contestants have 90 seconds to spell as many words as possible from a shared list of 30. They can also ask questions, but that will eat into their time.Last year, Bruhat Soma defeated Faizan Zaki in the spell-off after spelling 29 out of 30 words on the list correctly.The spell-off format is divisive because it tests contestants on “an entirely new skill,” Cole Shafer Ray, a former spelling coach, told The New York Times last year. But for those who love it, Ms. Loeffler said, the spell-off is a chance for spellers to be tested on the exact same words to see “who really comes out on top.”This year’s competition also reintroduced a written round, which tested both spelling and vocabulary skills in order to determine the quarterfinalists. Written rounds were used from the early 2000s until 2019 and came back in part to have a “more predictable number of spellers” going into the last rounds of the bee, Ms. Loeffler said.“For spellers who have studied really hard and really want to show off the breadth of their knowledge, it gives them the chance to do that with a lot more words than they’re going to receive onstage,” she said.May 29, 2025, 6:51 p.m. ETThe Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., has been hosting the national spelling bee all week. The preliminaries were on Tuesday, and the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds were on Wednesday. Tonight is the finals.May 29, 2025, 6:41 p.m. ETLars DolderIt’s probably not a surprise that journalists are enthralled with spelling bees. The Scripps National Spelling Bee was originally organized by a newspaper, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. And The New York Times has been covering bees for more than 150 years. In one of the earliest articles I found, from 1876, the last contestant standing won with “bewitching” – a charming denouement, indeed, but quaint by the standards of today’s competition.May 29, 2025, 6:30 p.m. ETScott Remer, of Cleveland, Ohio, during the finals of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Mr. Remer now coaches students who want to compete. Credit...Chuck Kennedy/MCT/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesScott Remer will have a unique vantage point during the final round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday: He has coached four of the nine finalists and was a finalist himself in 2008.“It’s stressful every year,” he said in an interview on Thursday morning.Mr. Remer, 31, has worked as a spelling bee coach for 14 years and has written four textbooks on the subject. Twenty-seven of his current students and eight former students competed in Maryland this week, representing nearly 15 percent of all competitors. Of the finalists, two are his current students: the 2024 runner-up, Faizan Zaki, 13; and Oliver Halkett, 13. His former students, Aishwarya Kallakuri, 14, and Sarvadnya Kadam, 14, are also competing in the finals.To prepare for his own turns onstage when he was a teenager, he studied what is known as the consolidated word list, a nearly 800-page list of words organized by how frequently they have appeared at the national spelling bee. His mother, an emergency-room doctor, was his coach and would group the words into related categories.After he finished fourth in his last year of eligibility, Mr. Remer said he still wasn’t done with the spelling bee.“There was just something incomplete about my journey,” he said. He now coaches year-round, as a main job.Here are Mr. Remer’s five top tips for spelling bee hopefuls:Know Latin and Greek root words: Many spelling bee words are of Latin and Greek origin. “So if you know the roots, you know the word,” he said.Understand, memorize and internalize language rules: The phonetic rules for how you spell the sounds in each language are critical. For example, the sound often written as “nya” in English is represented differently in other languages. In Portuguese, it’s spelled “nh.” In Spanish, it’s spelled with the letter “ñ.” “They can use those language rules to decipher what it is they’re hearing and translate what they’re hearing from the pronouncer into a spelling,” he said.Study vocabulary: In the second round of each level, from the preliminaries to the finals, spellers are given 30 seconds to answer a multiple-choice question about the definition of a word. The aim is to de-emphasize rote memorization of spelling. If the student doesn’t identify the correct definition, they’re out.Practice and memorize words that are likely to appear: But don’t try to memorize the entire dictionary. Mr. Remer said that would make training “very joyless,” and the winner would simply need to have the best memory, rather than a thorough understanding of language. “Spelling is really about thinking,” he said. “It’s a process of thinking and judgment and logic, and the words are like puzzles.”Just breathe: Remember the importance of breathing and slowing down when you hear a word that you don’t recognize. “The natural instinct is to panic, to blank out and to spell as quickly as you can. And if you do that, you’re almost guaranteed to get out,” Mr. Remer said.May 29, 2025, 6:10 p.m. ETThe first spelling bee was 100 years ago, in 1925, but we will crown the 110th champion tonight because the bee has ended in a two-way tie a few times and, most famously, an eight-way tie in 2019.May 29, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ETLouis Avetis, 12, of Orlando, Fla., spelling his word Tuesday in the preliminaries of the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.Credit...Kayla Bartkowski/Getty ImagesThe finalists of the Scripps National Spelling Bee will be vying for the chance to win $50,000 on Thursday night.This year’s contest celebrates 100 years since the first spelling bee was held on June 17, 1925. The annual competition has grown into a nationally televised event that draws competitors from around the nation and the globe. Contestants must be under the age of 16 and participate in regional competitions for the chance to qualify for the national championship.The finals will air live from 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday on Ion, a broadcast network owned by Scripps Networks. The bee’s website has a list of streaming platforms that include the network and a tool to find your local channel after inputting your ZIP code.Viewers can also watch on the bee’s website.The New York Times will begin live coverage at 6 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.This year’s spellers have come from all 50 states; the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands; and several other nations. They spent the last several days competing in preliminary spelling and vocabulary rounds at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington.Last year’s top prize went to 12-year-old Bruhat Soma of St. Petersburg, Fla., after he correctly spelled the word abseil during the competition’s second-ever spell-off. Bruhat, who had tied for 74th place at the 2023 bee and 163rd place in 2022, told The Times after his victory that winning the spelling bee was “like a dream come true.”“Instead of going down, I decided to be really motivated by that,” Bruhat said of his previous attempts, “so don’t be discouraged by failure.”May 29, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ETJacques Bailly winning the national spelling bee competition in 1980. He joined the bee as head pronouncer in 2003.Credit...Associated PressFrank Neuhauser had already outspelled more than two million schoolchildren to become the last speller among nine finalists. His winning word was easy for him, thanks in part to the common garden flower that his family grew in the backyard: “G-L-A-D-I-O-L-U-S.”With that, the 11-year-old from Louisville, Ky., became the first National Spelling Bee champion. It was June 17, 1925.Tens of millions of grade-school spellers later, the 100th anniversary of what is now the Scripps National Spelling Bee will close on Thursday night with the crowning of another new champion.The final word is likely to be a bit more challenging than what Frank faced — words in last year’s final round included “desmotrope,” “heautophany” and “nachschläge” — and the payoff will be significantly larger. Frank went home with $500, about $9,200, with inflation factored in. The winner on Thursday will take home $50,000.A lot has changed since that first contest. Today’s competition is televised and attracts spellers from around the world. But Thursday night’s competition is about remembering a century of spelling, and dozens of past champions will be there to cheer on the next member of their exclusive club.“We have 42 of our past champions, which is over half of our living champions, who are coming back this year. We’ve never seen an assemblage of past champions like this,” said Corrie Loeffler, the bee’s executive director. Ms. Loeffler, herself a former national spelling bee competitor, said champions from as far back as 1960 will be attending to help welcome a new peer to the club of former winners.World War II and the coronavirus pandemic forced organizers to cancel the competition a total of four times, so this isn’t the 100th contest. But organizers are still planning to celebrate the milestone with an archival exhibit at the conference center, a coffee-table book and a special website commemorating each contest.Here are some memorable moments that show how the competition has evolved over the past century:1920s1925: The first spelling bee is held.1926: Pauline Bell, also of Louisville, became the first female champion and took home an increased prize of $1,000 after correctly spelling the word cerise.1930sMacNolia Cox won the Akron district spelling bee in 1936.Credit...The Akron Beacon Journal1936: MacNolia Cox, a 13-year-old from Akron, Ohio, became the first Black contestant to reach the final round. Although the contest never barred Black participants, MacNolia and her mother had to sit in the back of the train on their way to Washington and were subjected to other discriminatory Jim Crow-era laws after arriving.Her story inspired the 2023 children’s picture book “How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee,” by Carole Boston Weatherford.1940s1941: Scripps-Howard Newspapers took over administration of the national spelling bee from The Louisville Courier-Journal, which had sponsored the contest until then.1943-45: World War II forced the first cancellation of the contest for three consecutive years starting in 1943.1946: The spelling bee was televised for the first time in history.1950sDana Bennett of Colorado and Sandra Owen of Ohio in New York on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” In 1957, they were declared co-champions after a grueling 10 hours of competition.Credit...Courtesy of Scripps National Spelling Bee1957: The competition lasted almost 10 hours, becoming the longest in history. Dana Bennett of Colorado and Sandra Owen of Ohio were ultimately named co-champions after exhausting the official word list.1959: Gerardo Aguirre of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, became the first non-U.S. citizen to participate.1960s1962: The N.A.A.C.P. issued a memo about a Virginia school district that barred Black students from participating in their local contests, preventing them from qualifying for the national competition. The Lynchburg News, the local newspaper that sponsored those contests, had adopted a “whites-only” policy even though the national contest had always been integrated.1968: Robert F. Kennedy, a Democratic front-runner for president, was assassinated in Los Angeles and pronounced dead on June 6, the first day of the 1968 national competition. Some planned excursions and activities for spellers in the Washington, D.C., area were canceled or modified as a result. The bee proceeded as scheduled.1980s1985: Balu Natarajan of Chicago became the first Indian America champion after correctly spelling the word milieu. Nearly 30 Indian Americans have won the spelling bee since, creating a phenomenon in the community that was later explored in the 2020 Netflix documentary “Spelling the Dream.” 1990s1997: Rebecca Sealfon of New York City became the first home-schooled spelling bee champion. Her winning word was euonym.Recalling her victory in an interview with The New York Times last week, Ms. Sealfon said that the biggest change since her competition has been the role of the internet in preparation.“The web was kind of in its infancy. There were some websites that were put up by the bee, a lot of them about roots. But most of my preparation, and the really important bulk of my preparation, came from mail-ordered study materials,” she said.1998: Jody-Anne Maxwell of Kingston, Jamaica, became the first Black champion. Her winning word was chiaroscurist.2000s2002: “Spellbound,” a documentary following competitors in the 1999 championship, was nominated for an Academy Award.2003: Former champion Jacques Bailly joined the national spelling bee as head pronouncer. His winning word at the 1980 bee was elucubrate.2010s2019: A stunning tie produced a record-breaking eight winners. The winning words were: auslaut (Rishik Gandhasri), erysipelas (Erin Howard), palama (Abhijay Kodali), aiguillette (Shruthika Padhy), odylic (Rohan Raja), cernuous (Christopher Serrao), pendeloque (Sohum Sukhatankar) and bougainvillea (Saketh Sundar).The “octochamps,” as Ms. Loeffler called them, “were so incredibly prepared for that moment and really showed the height of excellence in this competition,” she said. Still, the final went on for so long that it inspired a new rule known as the spell-off to avoid extensive ties and overtime.2020s2020: The spelling bee was canceled for the first time since World War II because of the Covid-19 pandemic.2021: Zaila Avant-garde of New Orleans became the first Black American champion. Her winning word was Murraya. The contest was held in Orlando, Fla., because of Covid restrictions at the Maryland resort where the competition was previously held.2022: The spell-off was used for the first time. Harini Logan of San Antonio won after spelling 22 words correctly from a list of 30.Margalit Fox contributed reporting.