WASHINGTON (AP) — After two straight years of ties, the Scripps National Spelling Bee is adding more sting:
The bee, now televised in prime time by ESPN, has exploded in popularity over the past two decades.
[...] instead of sticking to a list of 25 "championship words" selected weeks earlier, the final rounds could have as many as 75 words.
[...] the organizers can choose harder words on the fly if the spellers don't appear to be struggling.
Both spellers got one of the championship words wrong, but because they misspelled back-to-back, the bee continued.
[...] last year, Vanya Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam, both veteran spellers who had come close in previous bees, plowed through the championship words with ease.
Gokul's last word was "nunatak," which means a hill or mountain surrounded by glacial ice.
[...] the bee will scrap use of a list of words from local and regional bees in the first onstage round.
