Balu Natarajan

The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly called the National Spelling Bee) is an annual spelling bee held in the United States. The bee is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scripps Company and is held at a hotel or convention center in Washington, D.C. during the week following Memorial Day weekend. Since 2011, it has been held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center hotel in National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, just outside Washington D.C. It was previously held at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington D.C. from 1996 to 2010. Current and past Executive Directors of the Spelling Bee, Paige Kimble and Reta (née Reynolds) Rose have helped to widely popularize the Spelling Bee during their respective and lengthy tenures at the helm. On May 30, 2019, the Spelling Bee ran out of words that might challenge the contestants. They ended up having 8 winners instead of 1 or 2. Although most of its participants are from the U.S., students from countries such as The Bahamas, Canada, the People's Republic of China, India, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, and New Zealand have also competed in recent years. Historically, the competition has been open to, and remains open to, the winners of sponsored regional spelling bees in the U.S. (including territories such as Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Navajo Nation, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with overseas military bases in Germany and South Korea). Participants from countries other than the U.S. must be regional spelling-bee winners as well. Contest participants cannot be older than fourteen as of August 31 of the year before the competition; nor can they be past the eighth grade as of February 1 of that year's competition. Previous winners are also ineligible to compete. Since 1994, the cable-television channel ESPN has televised the later rounds of the bee; since 2006, earlier rounds have aired on ESPN during the day, and the Championship Finals have aired in the evening on ESPN. The 2020 National Spelling Bee competition, originally scheduled for May 24, was suspended and later canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first time it's been canceled since 1945.

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