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Subscribe to RSSLori Anne Madison, the 6-year-old who became the youngest-ever competitor in the National Spelling Bee, did not qualify for the semifinals but still made history. NBC's Lester Holt reports.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- "W-i-t-t-i-c-i-s-m." And with that word, correctly spelled by Kevin Lazenby, 13, of Opelika, Ala., the 85th National Spelling Bee got under way on Wednesday morning.
Each of the 278 participants spells two words during the day's preliminary rounds, and their scores will be combined with their scores from a 50-word computer test they took Tuesday to determine the field of no more than 50 semifinalists, The Associated Press reported. You can follow along with the day's rounds here.
This year's contest included the bee's youngest speller ever: 6-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Va. Lori Anne, speller No. 269, correctly spelled "dirigible" during her turn just before noon Wednesday. The Washington Post reported that she asked for a definition, got the word right and quickly took her seat.
But she misspelled "ingluvies" during the third round later that afternoon. Ingluvies is the crop (throat) of birds; Lori Anne provided the spelling e-n-g-l-u-v-i-e-s. When the final scores were released by early Wednesday evening, she learned that she would not move on to the semifinal round.
Lori Anne is a home-schooled student who loves swimming, math and the outdoors -- and says she wants to be an astrobiologist.
Think you're a good speller? Take this audio quiz
"She loves it and she does it because it's a passion, and we never push her into anything and want her to make her own choices," her mother, Sorina Madison, told The Associated Press.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP file
Lori Anne Madison, 6, of Lake Ridge, Va., walks through river water while playing with friends in a park in McLean, Va., on May 11.
For nearly half the spellers, math is a favorite subject, according to the National Spelling Bee web site, with science coming in second. And another fun fact -- at least 20 spellers have a relative who has competed in the event before.
Among their favorite words is humuhumunukunukuapuaa, which is a small Hawaiian trigger fish, according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. (Some of the words are so specific or archaic that they don't appear in standard dictionaries.)
As for winning words throughout the years, those seem to have become more difficult. In 1925, Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, Ky., won the bee with "gladiolus." The next year, Pauline Bell, also from Louisville, won with "cerise."
Last year, Sukanya Roy won with cymotrichous, which redirects to "hair" on Wikipedia.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
Smart young people from across the nation compete to become the next National Spelling Bee champion. Above, Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Va. is the youngest-ever contestant in the National Spelling Bee.
NBC News’ Ellie Hall contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
I wonder if, and how much did Spelling Bee pay to put this crap up. Come on, nobody cares.
Please; you're just being obstreperous. I love when ESPN has the Bee on.
I care and so do a lot of others. The national spelling bee is like a football game for people who read and love words. I'm guessing the last thing you read was a book with a lot of pictures or the sports section. If you find it boring, why did you read it?
Must be hard being A bibliophobe.
Nascar is in the sports section. Go be amused.
I care too. A Spelling Bee is for those who care about education and doing something productive with their lives.
Lori Anne Madison, you did great. Good for you, because it's clear you worked very hard and you deserve the recognition you're getting.
@bruce - HA!
Heh. You mean "you" don't care. Smart people care. Oh, wait...
When someone on here says "nobody cares" about this story, they're just talking about themselves.
(And that's probably because they're just jealous that little girl spells better than them and she'll succeed later on in life, where they've turned out to be complete utter failures and work at fast-food for minimum-wage where the only words they need to know are "Ya'll want fries with that?")
Those who bash her on here are probably the 20-and-30-somethings who post messages online everywhere and still don't know the difference between your/you're and there/their/they're.
Press on with pride Lori!!! Great!!! We who understand the young, wish you all the best!!!
Critic,
Don't forget the IDKs, LOLs, FMLs, <3 Us, and IMOs. They have a hard time just constructing a proper sentence.
Forget spelling. That's what the little red squiggly lines are for in Word and Firefox. /sarcasm.
It used to be entertaining, until they started asking words almost enitirely from jargon, foreign languages, or proper names/titles. The kids that win it now are so socially akward because they have to study spelling for 5 hours a night. What a great way to prepare them for the real world.
From the way you spell your name, I can see why you don't care.
Yes, it's always good to see these young, future democrats in the making...
I'm sure her parents are proud that their daughter could even get IN the competition... and then compete, that was the icing on the cake. Look for great things from this young lady.
Some of us do! I think to get this far is fabulous!
I don't follow spelling B's, but I do like it when people aren't afraid of showing their abilities. Hope this youngster carries on her interests.
endglueifs...sounds rite to me....on't care...
get your hankies out...time for tammy to spell...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvGGp32_wvw
It's usually the a$$es that have the first comment.
brilliant
b-r-i-l-l-i-a-n-t
brilliant
Can you use it in a sentence please?
Smart is easier.
i ain't smart nuff to be brilliant...used 'em both in a sentence...
It is too bad that she got knocked out so early, but she has nothing to be ashamed of. Just to get to the national spelling bee at such a young age is a huge accomplishment. Something tells me she will be back again in the future and probably do even better. It is also great to see that her parents have not turned her into some little bookworm and that she likes to get outside and play in the park with her friends. It sounds like the parents are doing a great job raising her and keeping a good balance in her little life.
What a darling, refreshing young girl!---She is special genius at 6 years old.
Lori Anne will have many chances to enter the National Spelling Bee for years to come.
Go Lori!!!!
Good for her! I hope she does very well in the competition.
AND she's absolutely adorable! Congrats, Lori Anne. I hope you keep up the wonderful work!
You are correct. She is a Cutie as well as being smart.
Spell check has made spelling bees irrelevant and obsolete. So this is hardly front page news.
While I do agree to some extent, everyone still need to learn how to spell correctly and use proper grammar. I still see many adults who are absolutely terrible at spelling and grammar.
It makes me cringe to read something that has been butchered grammatically. [Facebook posts, ahem.]
MS1 - This article sure beats reading about murders, rapists, pedophiles, kidnappings, deaths, etc. Some nice news once in a while is refreshing. And by the way, spell check does not check or correct everything so you still need to know grammar and spelling and must proofread on top of spell check, unless one doesn't care whether what you write is correct or not....I guess knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide is obsolete as well since we have calculators and computers? It will become increasingly difficult for the USA to stay on top in this competitive world without proper education. It's great that she's as knowledgeable as she is at such a young age. Great job, Lori and good luck to you!
Then you'd love icanhascheezburger dot com (lol cats). I know they're trying to be funny with the horrible spelling and grammar but it's just stupid and absolutely atrocious.
Spell checker isn't correct all the time as we all can contest. Only the people that question its resolves us look up to make sure the word they are using is the correct form. And then only in the end proof read the finished results to again check before posting. MSNBC even offers edit if you find something after posting which a lot of you never use. If today's adults are examples of what we have coming I'm afraid there are going to be a lot more children that just don't care how ignorant they sound and look (look not by what they wear but by how they write).
Being able to spell words properly is usually an attribute that is just part a larger understanding of the English language along with grammar, comprehension, etc. It does not simply mean the girl memorized a bunch of words. Plus, she loves math! Yuck! I just hope this early pressure is not too much for her in the long run.
Egg Sept. four the fact that spell check errs dew knot all ways ketch or fix things prop early.
Ha ha. Obsolete? I suppose that's why the newspapers, and on-line news, and handouts from my kids' school, are all littered with spelling mistakes and grammar errors. Because they are all using spell checkers and relying upon them.
Media publications don't use proofreaders anymore, and it's obvious. It's not that they think spell checkers can really do the job. It's that spell checkers do a half-baked job, and the publications are willing to live with that.
Hey, @spookyx, I wouldn't worry about the little girl feeling pressure. She looks like she just does all this for fun. She seems to be a completely relaxed, poised kid. There are a lot of kids who just learn quickly, and consume science, math, spelling, whatever you throw at them, as fast as they can. They get bored if they aren't thinking and doing.
With my dyslexic typing, spell checkers don't catch my grammatical or syntax errors, but proofreading catches most of them.
ya'no wat i mint two say...hook'd own fawnic's...good enuff fer me...
Most of the people who need spellcheckers don't use them.
spelckeck'r...yupp... it's still work'n...
Spelling ability is indicative of vocabulary as well as using the spelling of a unfamiliar word to figure out it's meaning. Also, you need to know to to spell well enough for spell checker to work.
Which is like saying calculators make learning math obsolete. Ignorant much?
Hey did that guy in the clip say...( A Birds Crop ) ?
In anycase she did well Congrats to her and those I hope they had a great time
I'm with you, girlo. I, too, was a child prodigy. Don't worry. By the time you're 35, no one will ever know that you are WAY smarter than them.
Consign yourself to the sad truth that most people are blithering idiots and have no legitimate excuse for breathing our air. These days,I design and build transmissions. My daughter, 16, is working toward building habitats in space and my son, 20, is learning 11 languages at once in hopes of landing a job with the CIA.
Be VERY selective about who you marry. You appear to be a brown dominant. That would mean that a red recessive or a blonde recessive would be an ideal choice. I married a red recessive and it worked out great. My kids are smarter than me and as cute as you.
you egotistical twat.
Cain - love your ego....hahahahahaha
Cain.....Yeah, the world is full of blithering idiots. Don't let those idiots damage your ego. I'm one of those NOT blithering idiots.
Cain is SO right. I regret sharing space with so many knuckle-draggers. You just have to lower your head and plow through it.
arrogance makes for a poor meal .if you feel that some one is lower than you, then lift them up.
Cain - Study narcissism! You need to shut your mouth and open your eyes. Learn, Cain, learn! You can do it! The emotional IQ is way more important for success than the intellectual IQ. Right now, I see your emotional IQ is around 12 - needs some help!
Cain: I can tell from your post you have Asperger's Syndrome and you are probably a hoot to be around at a party. Do your kids have any friends at all and have they ever had the pleasure of playing sports?
Twat might need a capital "T".
Followers of Cain - Please spell the word s-a-t-i-r-e
Cain-422647,
Well, being that smart, you did fail to learn one thing. Humility, is something most people with an average I.Q. (100) can learn by 8 years of age. In fact, 98% of people with an I.Q. between 80 and 99 learn that also by 8 years of age. Humility is a learned skill, not biologically inherited. But somehow you missed that one.
Thank you for showing all of us "regular folks" how smart you really are?
By the way, you would have integrated well in the 40's in Germany...
Cain is play'n ya'll...but i like the twat comment...
Hey all I agree with Cain - Humilty is for the wannabees - There is nothing wrong with being smart as long as you use it well
I love it when my children suceed on their brains and the will to learn more
Why the hell do you think we read, take classes out of our sphere - and want to do better and more? I thought that's what we all should be striving for - obviously with your comments I was wrong
Big news little boys - mostly - only 30% of Americans own passports - the Euro is at it's all time low - time to travel and broaden one
While I was in Italy - at the next dining table was a man from Georgia, USA with his two children - he said he takes them abroad every year during school vacation to learn about other cultures
These children would make you blush - could order their meals in Italian - and had the presence of being in a polite society - without being afraid - of not being accepted their ages were ten and twelve
Shame on you people who look down on someone who is proud of excellence!
And Fux News I usually agree with you but this time I differ - nothing wrong with touting excellence - it is as it should be - maybe a tad over the line but - 40's Germany? I think not - give him some slack - I perceive - he's a good guy unlike the know nothings that shoot from their center of gravity of these posts - maybe lower than that if you get my drift
Just because YOU don't care to hear about an issue doesn't mean that it is not NEWS. YOU do not define news, the general masses do, and clearly people care to read this story.
just shut up.
"No, you shut up!" "No, you shut up!" "No, you--"
Seems more like the six-year-olds have invaded this board rather than a spelling bee.
LOL! Isn't that the truth Standup?
MSNBC, would you please stop giving us the results and ruining it for those of us that want to watch it on ESPN later. Thanks!
It's a preliminary round.
This round isn't on TV. You could've watched in live on line, however.
TV coverage tomorrow morning and evening.
I love the expression on her face.
i wish her the best im curious if she wins it all its a small bit of history in the making either way
She is already out. She didn't make it to the final 50.
Key words in the story: home-schooled student
Home- and private-schooled students perform far better on average than students in public schools. I think we all know why.
How about citing some sources for that comment, xsited? Because I know plenty of home-schooled kids who can barely pass a basic skills math test who have "graduated" high school.
The children who perform best are those whose parents actually care about education. Public, private, home-school....it's irrelevant.
And, public schools offer more in terms of living in "reality." These kids who are so protected have some trouble in the real world. No one is helping you every minute of the day any more and they have lower levels of learning to deal with their peers.
krazymop - I guess you and a few others didn't know the answer to "I think we all know why" although you did make a statement that has some merit which I've explained below. The statistics are readily available comparing the test scores between home, private and public educated students. And it's logical that home- and private-schooled students perform better since the class size is much less than that of a child in public schools. Your comment about knowing "plenty of home-schooled kids who can barely pass a basic skills math test who have graduated high school" is meaningless since we're talking about averages.
"Children who perform best are those whose parents actually care about education" definitely has merit. Visit a PTA meeting at a public school and see how many parents show up; then visit a private school. The parental attendance for private schools is usually 100%. For public schools it's far less. That's why I believe it's important to shield kids in private schools by saying "no" to vouchers. It would be nice, however, for parents to opt-out of paying for public education if they're not going to use it.
AllPeopleRights - Incorrect. That's a common misconception.
I don't think being home-schooled has any real relevance in this case. The first article I read about the girl (a week ago?) stated the parents took her to a school for the gifted and they told the family she was too smart for them and needed to be home schooled as the school would just be holding her back.
Finally some one other than an Indian or Asian kid!
Last I checked.. India was part of Asia?
unless he was talking bout an american indian...
This story is about a 6 year girl, folks. Stop the critizing whether it is a newsworthy story or not. With all the violence and such in the headlines, we should be excited that a youngster would want to participate in this endeavor at all. Suck it up and cheer for the young people who have spent an inordinate amout of time learning words that most of us adults would never be able to pronounce much less spell.
WAY back in 1957 I came in second in the Norfolk VA spelling bee and missed a chance at the national contest. I know how exciting this event can be but for a 6 year old! WOW! and good luck.
It makes headlines because is white girl who nailed it. If it was a minority it would have not matter to MSNBC.
That's just stupid, jaster! 6 years old? Are you kidding me? Any child 6, of any color, would be news. Give your racism a rest.
Actually, if it were a six year old black child it would be huge news not just big news.
Most teachers wouldn't try to get a 6 years old in the competition. I just love mom saying, "We never push her - just let her do what she wants." LOL. Yada, yada, yada. How did she even hear about the competition then? This take hours and hours of preparation on words, derivations, etc. A 6 year old? Poor thing. Parents just have kids be an extension of themselves, don't they? Can we all say, "Six year olds deserve a childhood? The kind without studying 20 hours a day?" To each his own, but watch for burn-out from these kids "working" like adults. Over time, there are definitely negatives.
I hope she wins it all. Good luck sweety you are a fantastic little girl.
Announcer: "Dirigible."
Lori Anne: "Use it in a sentence, please."
Announcer: "I went to a local dirigible dealer but he was full of hot air. Hahahahahahaha ! Oh, sorry, young lady. . . . ."
Actually the word comes from a little known incident involving a drunk and his wife... "Dir ig ible not a cow."
Pretty dang funny, Rev.
Great kid. She'll do well for the first few rounds, but doesn't have the breadth of experience to make good guesses in later rounds. (and yes, a lot of the spellings are guesses because the words in later words are incredibly difficult)
Look out for her in a couple of years though!
Announcer: "Dirigible."
Lori Anne: "Definition, please."
Announcer: "It's, like, you know, like, one of those furry hamster thingies."
Lori Anne: "SECURITY !!!"
Rotten Little Johnnie was six years old in first grade and entered the school spelling bee. The teacher asked who could spell a word with the letter A; and little Johnnie screamed out ass and spelled. The teacher scolded him and went to the letter B; little Johnnie couldn't help himself and screamed out bitch and spelled it; the teacher wouldn't let him play any longer. Finally the teacher got to the letter R and no one raised their hand but Little Johnnie. The teacher thought for a moment and couldn't think of a bad word so she let Rotten Little Johnnie play again. He yelled our RAT and spelled it. The teacher surprised, said that's great little Johnnie. Then Little Johnnie held his hands about six inches apart and yelled, "with a dick this long".
Tell you what ... I consider myself a smart guy, went to college, successful at business and traveled the world and lived in several countries.
But watching kids (now one 6) spell words i hardly ever hear ( some never ) well it kind of make things relative doesn't it.
Best of luck, Lori. Us while folk need a little payback after the National Geography Bee finals. 1 Chinese kid, 2 white kids, and 17 Indians. The token white boys didn't last until the first commercial break.
Way to go Lori Anne!
Check your Friends request. :)
And this is NEWS??? Are you guys nuts, or what? What is your point?
To even come up with sh.t like this while the majority of high school grads can hardly write their name - who cares!!
Yup, brewzky23, get a life, you are missing out on reality. Please remove yourself from the gene pool - one of you is enough.
Did you name the rock you live under, or just crawl under anyone that's handy?
No, rocks are more your style, obviously.