Buzz buzz, the 84th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee starts today!
From May 31 through June 2, elite spellers from around the world will compete for the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship. The winner receives some nifty prizes, including $30,000 cash, scholarship funds, and a Nook eReader.
Of course we here at Wordnik love spelling and the Bee, so much so that we’ll be live-tweeting the final championship round this Thursday, June 2, starting at 8:30 PM eastern time. Join us for our live commentary by following us on Twitter.
But we also have all-things-spelling you can check out now, such as tags of all the winning words over the years, from gladiolus – “the center part of the sternum; any of several flowering plants, of the genus Gladiolus” – in 1925, to last year’s stromuhr, “an instrument for measuring the velocity of blood flow.”
You want lists? We got lists, from unrecognizable spelling bee words, to recognizable ones, (and more here and here). We have lists of potential spelling bee words, of different types of bees, and of words that look misspelled but aren’t.
Speaking of misspellings, Wordnik pal Ben Zimmer spoke with Scripps News about bad spellers in history, including Abraham Lincoln, and the dangers of spellcheckers and automatic correction.
Still not enough bee-ness for you? Think you can guess the word that will win the 2011 bee? We’ve started an open list for your guesses (2011 Spelling Bee Bingo) and if you guess the winning word, we’ll send you a Wordnik t-shirt and other Wordnik schwag! (If you’re not the betting type, you can also play this totally addictive spelling bee game from Visual Thesaurus.)
Also remember to join us on Twitter this Thursday as we live-tweet the championship round.
Best of luck to all the spellers!