WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
Another change for this year: ESPN NFL analyst and recent “Celebrity Jeopardy!” champion Mina Kimes has joined the bee as its television host.
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.
Thirty of the past 36 champions have been of Indian heritage, including last year’s winner, Faizan Zaki.
The bee is broadcast and streamed on channels and platforms owned by Scripps, a Cincinnati-based media company.
On Tuesday, preliminary rounds will stream on Scripps Sports Network and spellingbee.com from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. EDT.
Wednesday's quarterfinals will stream on Scripps Sports Network and spellingbee.com from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and semifinals can be watched on those platforms from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tape-delayed semifinals broadcast on ION from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Finals will broadcast Thursday on ION from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. The semifinals and finals will also air or be streamed on these Scripps-owned channels or services: ION Plus, Bounce, Grit, Laff, The Spot, Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More, Scripps News and Scripps Sports Network.
Spellers qualify by advancing through regional bees hosted by sponsors around the country. In order to compete, spellers must not have advanced beyond the eighth grade or be older than 15.
Contestants must get through two preliminary rounds, where they are quizzed on words from a list provided in advance. There is one spelling round and one multiple-choice vocabulary round.
Those who make it through the preliminaries sit for a written spelling and vocabulary test, with the top 100 or so finishers advancing to the quarterfinals. The words for the test, and for all subsequent rounds, are taken from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary.
Throughout the quarterfinals and semifinals, spellers are eliminated at the microphone through oral spelling or vocabulary questions.
About a dozen spellers advance to the finals. When only two remain, Scripps has the option to use a lightning-round tiebreaker known as a “spell-off” to determine the champion.
This year's bee has 247 spellers representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, three U.S. territories and five other countries: The Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.
The top returning finisher from 2025 is Sarv Dharavane of Dunwoody, Georgia, who finished third last year as an 11-year-old fifth-grader. Even if he falls short this year, he has two years of eligibility left.
Other possible contenders:
— Shrey Parikh, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Rancho Cucamonga, California, who finished third in 2024. He has dominated the bee circuit in the past year, winning the South Asian Spelling Bee, the SpellPundit National Spelling Bee and the Words of Wisdom Spelling Bee.
— Oliver Halkett, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Los Angeles who finished in a tie for seventh last year.
— Esha Marupudi, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Chandler, Arizona, who also tied for seventh last year.
The winner receives a custom trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. Here are the prize payouts:
— First place: $52,500 in cash, reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, a custom trophy and commemorative medal, and $1,000 in flight credits from Delta Air Lines.
— Second place: $25,000.
— Third place: $15,000.
— Fourth place: $10,000.
— Fifth place: $5,000.
— Sixth place: $2,500.
— All other finalists: $2,000.
Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.
FILE - Sarv Dharavane, 11, of Tucker, Ga., reacts after spelling his word correctly in the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Felix Rosenqvist's long-awaited Indianapolis 500 victory lap started sinking in quickly.
After gulping the traditional swig of milk and dumping the rest over his head Sunday, the winner of the closest race in Indy 500 history started making the winner's rounds. He spent two hours answering questions in his fire suit before heading to another photo shoot. Then there was a short celebratory night before hitting the early morning television shows, enduring additional photo shoots and, yes, Monday night's annual postrace dinner where he'll find out how much money he won.
Never mind that there's another race next weekend in Detroit.
But the 34-year-old Swede who endured so much heartbreak at Indianapolis and in IndyCars wasn't about to start complaining. No, he was too busy savoring the spoils of victory.
“I can sit here for 24 hours and do this, whatever you want,” Rosenqvist said with a smile. “It's funny, someone asked me to sign their beer bottle a minute ago and writing Indy 500 winner was like, it kind of struck me that I've done it. I still feel like it's a dream. I feel like I could wake up at any point and it's like, ‘Oh, it’s race day, we haven't run yet.' I still hope I don't wake up.”
Rosenqvist probably didn't get much shut-eye Sunday night and not just because his newborn daughter, Stella, is less than a month old.
This was the moment Rosenqvist's family dreamt about from the moment it started scraping together money for his karting career.
While he barely remembers the effervescent, guitar-playing Kenny Brack becoming the first Swede to win “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” back in 1999, he does remember his father telling him how great Brack was and how great a victory it was for the country.
Twenty-three years later, Marcus Ericsson replicated Brack's feat on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval. Ericsson celebrated his 500 win by taking the iconic Borg-Warner Trophy on tour across his home country, which has a population of less than 11 million.
The Meyer Shank Racing driver isn't sure if that will be in the plans this time, but he was grateful for Ericsson welcoming him to the club.
“I'm pretty proud to be one of three Swedish (winners), which is a pretty small nation in the grand scheme of things, to have won the biggest race in the world,” he said. “(Marcus) came up to me when we were drinking the milk in victory circle and he said I earned it, that I deserved it. That meant a lot to me.”
Rosenqvist certainly earned his place in history with his unforgettably daring move — hurtling down the front straightaway behind David Malukas on the final lap, making a perfectly timed swing outside, catching a tow and edging his car across the yard of bricks, barely ahead of Malukas.
The victory margin of 0.0233 seconds was even smaller than Al Unser Jr.'s 0.043-second victory over Scott Goodyear in 1992, and even in the moment, Rosenqvist understood the significance of what happened.
“I thought I was second, to be honest. I was like, this is — this sucks, now we’re second in the 500,” said Rosenqvist, who made his fifth straight start in the top nine and placed fourth twice in the previous four years. “I thought I didn’t have it, and then I shifted up, and it was just kind of sucking up to David, and it was just enough to get me over the finish line, half a foot ahead of him. You can’t even dream up that stuff. It was just so cool. I’ll watch it a million times.”
But before Rosenqvist became a winner here, he was there in the shoes of Malukas and Pato O'Ward — two-time Indy runner-ups who have been unable to bask in their own milk bath. Rosenqvist's advice: Never give up.
“That's what I've done,” he said. “If you're knocking on the door, it will happen.”
This year, it did thanks in part to this first-time father understanding that there's more to life than racing. His wife, Emille, and his new daughter helped him learn that lesson heading into the biggest race of the IndyCar season, and one day, when old enough, Stella will see her father's image on the trophy and understand what he did and how she helped.
And, to Rosenqvist, that will be the sweetest victory of all.
“It's funny because if you go to our house, we don't have any pictures of racing, you wouldn't know I'm a race car driver because I tried to separate work and home,” he said. “But I think, yeah, this kind of changes that. I hope she'll be proud of it, and for her to be our little lucky charm for the rest of her life.”
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Felix Rosenqvist, top, of Sweden, beats David Malukas, bottom, to the finish line to win the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Felix Rosenqvist, of Sweden, celebrates after winning the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)
Felix Rosenqvist, foreground, of Sweden, beats David Malukas to the finish line to win the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)
Felix Rosenqvist, of Sweden, celebrates after winning the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Felix Rosenqvist, of Sweden, pumps his fist at the request of track officials after winning the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Sunday, May 24, 2026 in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)
