The 93rd Scripps National Spelling Bee was held at the

ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex The ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is a multi-purpose sports complex located in the Walt Disney World Resort, in Bay Lake, Florida, United States, near Orlando. The complex includes nine venues and hosts numerous professional and amateur s ...

Bay Lake, Florida Bay Lake is a city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 29 at the 2020 census. It is named after a lake that lies east of the Magic Kingdom. All four of the Walt Disney World Resort theme parks, and one of Walt Disney W ...

. The finals were held on July 8, 2021, and televised on

ESPN2 ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially fo ...

and

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

. It was won by

Zaila Avant-garde Zaila Avant-garde (born February 9, 2007) is an American speller, basketball player, and juggler. She won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee. She is the first African-American contestant to win the bee and is the second Black winner, after J ...

, the first African American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and the second black person to do so (after

Jody-Anne Maxwell Jody-Anne Maxwell (born 1986) is from Kingston, Jamaica and was the winner of the 1998 Scripps National Spelling Bee at the age of 12. She made history as the first non-American to win the competition. According to ''Ebony'' magazine, Maxwell, w ...

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

Field

Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, the 2020 spelling bee has been cancelled for the previous year. For 2021, the first round was held virtually on June 12 and had 209 spellers from the United States and several other countries. There were eleven finalists: ten Americans and one Bahamian, the first from his country to make it to the final.

Competition

Jill Biden Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden (born June 3, 1951) is an American educator and the current first lady of the United States since 2021, as the wife of President Joe Biden. She was the second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017 when her hus ...

, the current

First Lady First lady is an unofficial title usually used for the wife, and occasionally used for the daughter or other female relative, of a non-monarchical A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state fo ...

of the United States, attended in person. She previously attended back in 2009. The competition went 18 rounds in total. The third-to-last speller was eliminated in round 14 after misspelling ''

athanor In alchemy, an athanor ( ar, التنور, ''at-tannūr'') is a furnace used to provide a uniform and constant heat for alchemical digestion. Etymologically, it descends from a number of Arabic texts of the period of the Califate which use the t ...

'', a type of alchemical furnace. Avant-garde and the runner-up, Chaitra Thummala, then competed head-to-head for three rounds. In the last of these, Thummala misspelled ''

neroli oil Neroli oil is an essential oil produced from the blossom of the bitter orange tree (''Citrus aurantium subsp. amara'' or ''Bigaradia''). Its scent is sweet, honeyed and somewhat metallic with green and spicy facets. Orange blossom is also extract ...

'', giving Zaila Avant-garde the opportunity to spell ''

murraya ''Murraya'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae. It is distributed in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.Jody-Anne Maxwell Jody-Anne Maxwell (born 1986) is from Kingston, Jamaica and was the winner of the 1998 Scripps National Spelling Bee at the age of 12. She made history as the first non-American to win the competition. According to ''Ebony'' magazine, Maxwell, w ...

, who remains the only person not from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to do so.

New rules

Following the 2019 final where eight players tied at the end of the competition, a second list of championship words was added for a tiebreaking round. When the tiebreaking round is used after all championship words have been exhausted, or the round concludes after 1 hour, 55 minutes of the televised broadcast, remaining contestants, in numerical order, spell the list of championship words in 90 seconds. They can still ask for definition, language of origin, part of speech, alternate pronunciations, and the use in a sentence, but that will be part of the 90-second period. The contestant who spells the most words correctly in the spell-off round will be declared champion, with a tiebreaker of greater percentage of correctly spelled words in the round will determine the winner. A tie may still exist if the percentage is identical. However, in the actual final, the round was not used, as the Bee did not run overlong.

Word list championship round

References

{{Scripps National Spelling Bee, state=collapsed Scripps National Spelling Bee competitions 2021 in Florida 2021 in education

Field

Competition

New rules

Word list championship round

See also

References