The Town of Odyssey

Finals are this Thursday.

Thanks for the reminder!

This one wasn't a tie.

Interestingly 3 of the final 4 were from the DFW area of Texas.

I heard they made a new rule this year to stop having ties. Didn't need it this time though.

It was another new rule that came into play here. The kid that won wouldn't have been eligible before because he didn't win his local competition, but this year they added some kind of wildcard thing that let him in.

Edit:

More info on the situation. Apparently the person he beat in the final was the one who beat him in the county bee? That doesn't seem right.

I actually love the addition of the RSVBEE program. At it's heart the spelling bee is not a competition against other people. It's the speller vs the dictionary. All RSVBEE does is allow more (Nearly double!) the number of kids to get a completely even shot in DC. Before this say you lived in the same region as Vanya Shivashankar and her sister. For a whole decade there wasn't even a reason to go compete at the local. You just didn't have a chance.

The other nice side effect is that it allows more people with National Stage experience to get there. So many first timers just go down immediately once the lights are on and they're being broadcast on national tv. This should really help to increase the level of competition at the national stage.

I heard about this on the radio this morning and figured there would be some discussion on the ToO! It's neat that somebody was able to win in a less conventional way. These kids are amazing!

I'm not saying in the long run it's a bad change, it's just weird here in the first year since it's brand new. And especially since it happened to end up being him and her in the end, it's like wait a minute until this very year you wouldn't be here right now, specifically because of her, now you go on and beat her with your brand new second chance. It's just an odd situation, as any adjustment to a long established procedure is at first.