Cymotrichous.
Go ahead. Use it in a sentence. We dare you.
If you are one of the 560 whiz kids from around North America brushing up ahead of the 92nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, which starts Monday, take heart: We seriously doubt that the bee masters will hit you with cymotrichous, which was already the winner back in 2011. A 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl named Sukanya Roy nailed it.
As this year’s contestants get ready for Monday’s preliminary multiple-choice face-off, let us spell it all out for you: Onstage spelling competitions will take place all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Finalists will compete starting at 7 a.m. PDT Thursday, when no more than 50 contestants will take the stage in National Harbor, Maryland, to do battle. Viewers can follow along on the Watch ESPN app. Once the finalists are whittled down to about a dozen kids, the network will show the finals Thursday night — and the winner will take home a $50,000 prize.
According to the bee’s website, 565 youngsters from around the country will be competing; of those, nearly two dozen are from the Bay Area. Meet the local contestants:
Soham Kulkarni, a sixth-grader from Santa Clara
Rishik Gandhasri, a seventh-grader from San Jose
Caitlin Higuchi, an eighth-grader from Milpitas
Sameer Tangirala, a seventh-grader from San Jose
Vayun Krishna, a sixth-grader from Sunnyvale
Arthur Tang, a fourth-grader from Pleasanton
Arya Reddyvari, a seventh-grader from Pleasanton
Ben Samek, a sixth-grader from Los Altos
Tejas Sreedhar, an eighth-grader from San Ramon
Anisha Rao, an eighth-grader from Dublin
Prithvi Dixit, a seventh-grader from Redwood City
Owen Mercer, an eighth-grader from Scotts Valley
Mark Salama, a seventh-grader from San Rafael
Shradha Rachamreddy, a third-grader from San Jose
Shreyas Chakravarty, a sixth-grader from Fremont
Rohan Phanse, a eighth-grader from Palo Alto
Vikrant Chintanaboina, a fourth-grader from San Jose
Chaitra Thummala, a fourth-grader from San Ramon
Nidhi Vadlamudi, a seventh-grader from Santa Clara
Neil Chandran, a sixth-grader from Alamo
Amith Vasantha, an eighth-grader from Saratoga
Leilani Campos, an eighth-grader from San Mateo
Nicole Yang, a fifth-grader from Foster City
And for the participants, here’s a bit of advice from a few finalists in that 2011 battle:
- Don’t do what runner-up Laura Newcombe did by adding an unnecessary “p” to “sorites” with a losing “psorites”
- Do use the palm of your hand like Lily Jordan did when she spelled out the word “thanatophia” before going on to spell it correctly
- Don’t go crazy with the letters like Arvind Mahankali did when he misspelled “jugendstil” as uguntschtiel
- And don’t try and get too fancy like Dakota Jones of Las Vegas did when spelled the word “zanja” as “zangha”
For fans and would-be spellers, check out these tips for getting your spelling-bee groove on:
It’s never too early to start preparing
The Scripps spelling bee site has a ton of advice, starting with lists for first-graders of great books full of great words, including “The Antlered Ship,” “Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories,” “Through with the Zoo” and “Benny Doesn’t Like to Be Hugged.”
Watch this video
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Get down to the root of the (word) problem
The SpellPundit’s website and blog offer great tools and training tips for aspiring “spellebrities,” including this bit of wisdom:
“A lot of people think spelling is boring because it requires a lot of memorization, but this is untrue. The way the words are spelled is not random — many are a combination of Latin/Greek roots or certain language patterns. Spelling becomes fun when you learn roots and patterns, because then it becomes a puzzle. For example, if you are asked to spell the word ‘cinephile’ (a lover of motion pictures), you can piece it together using roots, even if you’ve never seen the word before. The Greek root ‘cine-‘ is short for cinema and ‘–phile’ is from the Greek root ‘philos’ meaning loving.”
Finally, in case you didn’t know …
Cymotrichous means “having wavy hair.” It originates from a Greek word. Now go impress your friends!
