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The best young spellers in the English language are competing at the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week, continuing a more than century-old tradition.
The three-day competition begins Tuesday and concludes Thursday night.
The first bee was held in 1925, when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington.
After a long run at a convention center in suburban Maryland, the bee returns to the nation’s capital this year at Constitution Hall, a few blocks from the White House.
This is the 98th bee; it was canceled from 1943 to 1945 because of World War II and again in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s champion will be the 111th, because the bee ended in a two-way tie several times and an eight-way tie in 2019.
