Scripps National Spelling Bee 2019: TV Schedule, Live Stream, Start Time, More

Last year's Scripps National Spelling Bee set the record for number of participants with 516. It didn't take long for that mark to be broken.

This year's Bee, the 92nd edition of the competition, which began Monday with the preliminary test, features 565 participants. It is taking place in National Harbor, Md., and will be covered by ESPN and its family of channels for the 26th consecutive year.

The 565 spellers participating came from a field of an estimated 11 million students. The full list of contestants can be found at the Scripps National Spelling Bee site.

2019 National Spelling Bee Schedule

All times ET. All rounds can be streamed on Watch ESPN.

Tuesday, May 28

Round 2 and the beginning of Round 3, 9:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, May 29

Round 3, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Announcement of finalists, 4:45 p.m.

Thursday, May 30

Finals, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., ESPN2

Prime-time finals, 8:30 to 10:30 p.m., ESPN

Preview

There's more on the line than just bragging rights in the National Spelling Bee. The winning contestant will earn a trophy and a $40,000 cash prize. There will also be awards for some of the other top finalists, most notably a $30,000 prize going to the second-place finisher.

That's a nice amount of money to potentially go to college funds for the top spellers, who range from seven years old to 15 years old in this year's field.

The youngest speller in the Bee is Faizan Zaki, the lone seven-year-old in the field. He is a student at The Guthrie School in Allen, Texas. So, how does he feel heading into a competition against 564 of the best young spellers, all older than him?

"I just feel normal," Zaki told Denver7 News' Kumasi Aaron.

There are three 15-year-olds in this year's field: Jaxson Hundt (South Bend, Ind.), Hannah Leach (Jerusalem, Ohio) and Seunga Hong (Seoul, South Korea).

While participants were not eliminated for misspelling a word during Monday's preliminary test, that will change Tuesday. In the second and third rounds, a misspelled word leads to elimination from the Bee.

The finals begin with the fourth round on Thursday. If a contestant misspells a word, he or she is eliminated. The competition continues, with breaks from the officials throughout, until a champion—or co-champions—is declared.

The full rules for the competition can be found on the National Spelling Bee site.

For people watching the Bee, this is a great opportunity to learn some new words for your vocabulary and be impressed as young children dazzle with spellings of long, unfamiliar words. For example, here are the winning words from the last three Bees: koinonia (2018), marocain (2017), and Feldenkrais and gesellschaft (2016).