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City and regional champions participating in the championship finals of the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. must qualify under two basic requirements:
They must not have passed beyond the eighth grade at the time of their individual school finals; and
They must not reach their 16th birthday on or before the date of the national finals.
Contests for classroom, school, district, city or regional championships may be conducted either in writing or orally, or a combination of the two. The state and national championship finals, however, shall be an oral competition, with eliminations on a "miss-and-out" basis in the traditional Spelling Bee manner.
Words used in the state and national finals shall be selected from the lists used in the various city and regional contests and from Webster's Third New International Dictionary and its 1966 Addenda Section.
Words shall be pronounced according to the diacritical markings in Webster's unabridged dictionary, from which the pronouncer shall select the definition or definitions that he or she gives. With the approval of the judges, the pronounced may give a fuller explanation of the meaning of a word or supplement the dictionary definition or definitions quoted.
In competition, after the pronouncer gives the contestant a word, the contestant may also pronounce the word before spelling it, after spelling it, or, if he so chooses, not at all.
The contestant may request the pronouncer to re-pronounce the word, define it, or use it in a sentence. The pronouncer shall grant the request until the judges agree that the word has been made reasonably clear to the contestant. Judges may disqualify any contestant who ignores a request to start spelling.
Having started to spell a word, a contestant may stop and start over, retracing the spelling from the beginning, but in the retracing, there can be no change of letters and their sequence from those first pronounced. If letters and their sequence are changed in the respelling, the speller will be disqualified.
Upon missing the spelling of a word, the contestant drops out of the contest. The next word on the pronouncer's list is given to the next contestant.
When the contestants are reduced to two, the elimination procedure changes. At that point, when one contestant misspells a word, the other contestant shall be given an opportunity to spell that same word. If the second contestant spells that word correctly, plus the next word on the pronouncer's list, then the second contestant shall be declared the champion.
If one of the last two spellers misses and the other, after correcting the error, misspells the new word submitted to him, then the misspelled new word shall be referred to the first speller. If the first speller then succeeds in correcting the error and correctly spells the next word on the pronouncer's list, then he shall be declared champion.
If both spellers misspell the same word, both shall continue in the contest, and the one who first misspelled the word shall be given a new word to spell. The contest shall then continue on under Rules 9 and 10.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary and Addenda Section shall serve as the final authority for the spellings of words in the state and national finals. If a word has two or more accepted spellings, only the spellings set in boldface type and separated by the word, or, and in some cases the word, also, at the beginning of the descriptive matter will be accepted as correct. Words having the labels archaic and obsolete (abbreviated obs) and regional labels (like North, Midland, South, Brit(ish), Irish) will not be accepted as correct.
Any question relating to the spelling of a word should be referred to the judges immediately. The deadline for making a protest is before the start of the next round. When only two spellers remain, a protest must be made immediately, that is, before the second speller has started to spell the word given him or her; or, if both have missed the same word, before the correct spelling is given the audience.
The judges are in complete control of the Bee. Their decision shall be final on all questions.
Tape should be played for disputes rather than contestant re-spelling. This could lead to change by speller.
NOTE: These are the rules that govern both the State and National Bees and should be observed in local and regional bees.