The Scripps National Spelling Bee is underway, fully in-person, after being canceled or held virtually the past couple of years because of the pandemic.
- 229 spellers took the stage on Tuesday and were greeted with a tweaked preliminary-round format that included spelling a word from a provided list of 4,000 - more than twice as many as in years past.
- Here are a few examples from Tuesday:
- "Coulrophobia" = a fear of clowns
- "Ormolu" = a gold-colored alloy of copper, zinc, and sometimes tin
- "Bromegrass" = any grass of a large genus of grasses native to temperate regions
- 88 out of 229 spellers advanced to today's (Wednesday) quarterfinals.
- What's one word, no matter how hard you try, that you spell incorrectly all the time?
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