A record-breaking number of spellers — 562 — competed their hearts and minds out during this week’s 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. And a record-breaking number beat the bee, with eight contestants crowned “co-champions” at the conclusion of Thursday night’s finale.
For the rest though, a word (or words) got the better of them. Whether their elimination was controversial or incontrovertible (both knockout words in round No. 3), whether it left them feeling dubitative, stolid, or even, say, inured (round No. 3 again), these unlucky competitors made a typo, and got dinged for it — literally dinged, that is, thanks to the bee’s iconic bell used to denote a wrong answer.
Here is a comprehensive list of all the words that cost a speller their place in the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee:
Round 2:
Malachite; placidly; sorghum; Andes; hedebo; courlan; parochialism; Valparaiso; Herculean; horripilation; perambulate; irrision; adonize; cilia; olid; scrofulous; privet; comity; kanzu; parturition; pishposh; satiate; perforation; ritenuto; parietal; cannellini; subsultory; vervain; coruscated; huipil; Barbizon; connoisseur; chambray; crinoline; Pulitzer; noology; kurgan; saccade; dubonnet; stereognosis; fussbudget; placoderm; annus mirabilis; griseous; metopscopy; dilatory.
Round 3:
Occlude; cloying; marginalia; palliatory; accretionary; tropophye; Chaplinesque; pseudologist; taffeta; duologue; symptomatology; postern; contumely; Rooseveltian; deceit; cortisol; kalamata; nodule; elegize; quintessence; parvanimity; aquaflorium; disillusion; effluent; coffering; gyro; aminence; decedent; autostrada; moniker; covenant; Tallahassee; bronchoscope; dubitative; verdurous; salvageable; conceptualize; inconsequentia; vestibule; dissimilitude; sanative; wroth; modem; emollience; seder; ossuary; allocation; solipsistic; Seoul; prosody; protrusile; erelong; deleteriously; vagaries; celebutante; unanimity; panache; auspicate; mythomania; transilient; controversial; wisteria; carabiner; stewardship; pallium; bankruptcy; thyroidectomy; primitive; revelty; seism; yuzu; stolid; regalian; telenovela; junket; trough; Richter; gracility; atrophy; Knickerbocker; odeon; discrete; mores; incendiary; maxim; candor; obsolescence; sojourner; florescence; metaphysicize; abacus; philia; aggressor; sedge; sibilatory; pyramidoidal; fatuously; equitable; malediction; plethora; phloem; supposititious; won ton; chimera; antechamber; expediently; piscary; destructible; concision; knoll; imposture; stannum; lunette; maundy; lexis; porcine; putrescible; meerkat; predecessor; rubeola; invigilate; monopsony; accede; pixelated; contravene; meliorist; quadrennium; grandiloquent; pinion; protervity; penury; impermissible; moray; shallot; vermillion; phlegmatic; surficial; fluviatic; incontrovertible; antiquary; tendon; interrogatory; subglottal; stemma; stymie; inured; upholstery; somesthetic.
Note: after round three, the field of remaining spellers was culled dramatically — down to a field of just 50 — based on the scoring of an on-paper test. For the elite finalists competing from round four onwards, the words thrown at them are almost all too much for Spellcheck, which likely says it all:
Round 4:
Ergodic; Hanseatic; cyclamen; doraphobia; nuchal; postil; abrazo; pelargic; praseodymium; pilosebaceous.
Round 5:
lychnoscope; kula; mouton; eschalot; terebinthinate; diaeresis.
Round 6:
Ferreiro; lomatine; koftgari; bullace; gharial.
Round 7:
Ixodid; diallage; theileriasis; pteryla.
Round 8:
Ascidium; palatschinken; bodieron; scaevola; Wundtian; Marrucinian; coelogyne; yertchuk; Pallottine.
Round 10:
Cuirassier; flaser.
Round 11:
Hieracium.
Round 12:
Jalap; chama.
Round 13:
Ischiocerite.
Round 14:
Rassenkreis.
Round 15:
Tettigoniid.
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