Back in the day, long before the invention of spell-check and the popularity of texting, I was an excellent speller. Not to brag (well, maybe just a little), but I aced almost every spelling test put in front of me as a kid; I even won a school-wide spelling bee. Now I rely more on the squiggly red line under my typed words to tell me what’s right and wrong. But though my once laudable spelling skills have fallen a bit by the wayside, at least I can still take some pride in my spelling bee wins … or so I thought, until I saw 2010’s winning word: “stromuhr.” It makes my own winning word, “vacuum,” look like foolish child’s play in comparison.
Clearly, I wouldn’t stand a chance in today’s spelling bee competitions. A fourteen-year-old named Anamika Veeramani spelled a word at the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee that a twenty-five-year-old named Vicki (me) had never even seen in print before. Still, maybe I haven’t gotten stupider with time after all, because if the National Spelling Bee’s evolution over the years is any indication, the rules for being a spelling champ have become much stricter.
From “Knack” to “Stromuhr”
The nine contestants in the country’s first national spelling bee, in 1925, would be shocked at how much it’s grown. The 2010 competition boasted 273 spellers—the most in the event’s history—who won regional, Scripps-sponsored bees all over the country. In fact, the ever-growing number of contenders is one of the main reasons why the word-difficulty level has greatly surpassed that of “vacuum.” “The words are getting harder because the level of competition has risen,” Paige Kimble, the director of the National Spelling Bee, told the publication Education Next in 2010.
To see firsthand the increasing toughness Kimble referred to, check out the winning words from the first few decades of the Bee. (Scripps took over the National Spelling Bee in 1941.)
1932: knack
1941: initials
1956: condominium
1967: Chihuahua
1975: incisor
Considering that the contest is limited to the eight-to-fifteen age range, these words are fairly challenging. However, they’re nothing compared with the winning words of the last ten years. Could you define most of them, let alone spell them?
2000: demarche
2001: succedaneum
2002: prospicience
2003: pococurante
2004: autochthonous
2005: appoggiatura
2006: Ursprache
2007: serrefine
2008: guerdon
2009: Laodicean
2010: stromuhr
