Spellbound (2002 film)

Spellbound is a 2002 documentary that was directed by Jeffrey Blitz. The film follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature Yana Gorskayas editing won the ACE Eddie award for best editing of documentary. Spellbound won the Emmy for CulturalArtistic Programming and Jeffrey Blitz was nominated for directing. Frank Neuhauser, winner of the first National Spelling Bee, held in 1925, appears in the film.

Neil as speller 139 missed hellebore in the bee to get ninth place. Other words Neil spelled include encephalon, desecration, mercenary, Darjeeling, and hypsometer. He was sponsored by the Orange County Register. Neil is a graduate of UC Berkeley. Before he went to college, he went on a jet ski expedition with his father and his sister, Shivani, also a speller. He is currently the COO of Greens Global, a real estate company based out of San Clemente, CA. On July 3, 2011, he married Archana Sheth, also a UC Berkeley graduate. He is also an avid chess player, and has earned overchess trophies in his life.Emily Stagg speller 148 was sponsored by the New Haven Register in New Haven, Connecticut and spelled seguidilla, disclaimant, kookaburra, viand, apocope, brunneous, clavecin spelled incorrectly as clavison. She came in 6th place. In 2006, as a junior in Carleton College, she wrote an oped article for the New York Times questioning the usefulness of the National Spelling Bee. ........

Source: Wikipedia