2019 Spelling Bee
Whoa, that's crazy! Good for them! Very impressive. Without much interest in spelling bees in general, this seems like a good thing to me - lots of great competitors.
Huh, it seems like a terrible thing to me. Why hold the event if you aren't going to decide a winner? It's anticlimactic enough to let two people tie, this one is just ridiculous.
I can see how a contest should have a winner, but after that many rounds, if they're still tied, maybe they're all equally worthy of the title. This seems like the kind of system that is designed to have the potential for ties for top competitors. If they really don't want ties, they need to change the system.
They definitely were each deserving after that marathon, it's just off-putting optics to me personally to go 'ok we've had enough of this, 8-way tie!'
- Christian A.
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I agree with your perception of the situation, bookworm. I felt the same way when I saw the news. I understand the reasoning, but it really seems like the competition should be capable of handling really good competitors. If the contestants seem prepared to go on endlessly, the proctors should be ready for that, because the contestants have earned it. I think it was a dishonor to their efforts to just call it quits once it was arbitrarily decided that they had lasted long enough.
-- 13 Jun 2019 11:06 am --
In fairness, this was a truly unprecedented situation. They would have had enough prepared words to go on longer if it were only the usual handful of super spellers making a long run, but with eight still going late they went through them more at a time than they likely expected to.
-- 10 Dec 2019 10:52 am --
"Spelling Bee reduces participants, makes changes to avoid tie"
In fairness, this was a truly unprecedented situation. They would have had enough prepared words to go on longer if it were only the usual handful of super spellers making a long run, but with eight still going late they went through them more at a time than they likely expected to.
-- 10 Dec 2019 10:52 am --
"Spelling Bee reduces participants, makes changes to avoid tie"
It sounds like a tie is still possible, and I thought it was interesting that the type of participants they reduced weren't part of last year's winners anyway.
Yeah I didn't see a real connection between the article headline and content either.