Adeel Hassan, New York Times, May 29, 2025.

“Scott Remer will have a unique vantage point during the final round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday: He has coached four of the nine finalists and was a finalist himself in 2008. ‘It’s stressful every year,’ he said in an interview on Thursday morning. Mr. Remer, 31, has worked as a spelling bee coach for 14 years and has written four textbooks on the subject. Twenty-seven of his current students and eight former students competed in Maryland this week, representing nearly 15 percent of all competitors. Of the finalists, two are his current students: the 2024 runner-up, Faizan Zaki, 13; and Oliver Halkett, 13. His former students, Aishwarya Kallakuri, 14, and Sarvadnya Kadam, 14, are also competing in the finals.”

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Marissa J. Lang, Washington Post, May 28, 2025; photo credit: Mike McCoy (Scott and his 2025 spellers)

“Today, Remer is one of the best-known coaches in the country. He’s mentored hundreds of competitive spellers and a handful of national champions between the ages of 9 and 14. He wrote Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a popular spelling bee textbook now in its fifth edition.”

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Scott Remer, The Guardian, May 27, 2025; photo credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“In its emphasis on linguistic precision and its heartfelt delight in words, the National Spelling Bee is already political in Orwell’s sense. The Bee also has an implicit politics of appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Though most spellers are American, the competition has an international flavor: it regularly features participants from Ghana, Canada, Jamaica, South Korea, China, and Nigeria, and spelling bees have sprung up in countries like Zimbabwe too. The welcome which the Bee extends to logophiles from all over the world inculcates in kids an appreciation of other cultures and promotes a cosmopolitan worldview. Spellers study words from Latin, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German; this cultivates their love of linguistic variety. What’s more, the fact that the South Asian community regularly dominates the upper echelons of the competition reaffirms the importance of immigration to our society.”

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Scott Remer, The Guardian, May 27, 2024; photo credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images

“Competitive spellers are ‘word detectives.’ They receive a training in applied linguistics, often practicing with parents, teachers, and coaches like me. Spellers amass a vast repertoire of Latin and Greek stems – there are at least 800 in my textbook Words of Wisdom – which they can then use to analyze almost any Latin or Greek-derived word. They master the phonetic rules which structure the orthographic systems of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Greek and German. They train their unconscious mind to detect patterns, and they cultivate a sense of when a word is likely to be an exception to the phonetic rules.

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Remy Tumin, New York Times, June 1, 2023.

"Good spellers are like good detectives: They know how to ask the right questions and use the answers as clues to solve puzzles. Good spellers tend to be children who are good at recognizing patterns, said Scott Remer, a former competitor turned coach. They’ll start the methodical process of piecing together the clues — asking for a definition, the origins of the word, the part of speech, different pronunciations — before making a hypothesis and proposing a spelling.

Mr. Remer said a good speller has to focus on several areas of study in order to succeed: vocabulary, Latin and Greek roots, orthographic rules for each language, memorization, and a streamlined study method.

Then there are the “habits of character” that the bee requires, encourages and reinforces, he said, including self-discipline, poise and grit, characteristics that are more widely seen in the older competitors.

Spellers who get caught in the fight-or-flight response can’t refer back to their coaching or study sessions, he said.

“Panic can be a very big enemy of a speller,” he said.

But no matter how many words or roots a competitor can study, intuition — and luck — still play a big role in the outcome.

'“You can study all you want, but at the end of the day, there may be words that you come across that you’ve never spelled before,” he said.“

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Remy Tumin, Maria Cramer and Maggie Astor, New York Times, June 2, 2023.

“Scott Remer, his current coach, said it was clear that Dev felt strong about his ability to spell the word Dr. Bailly threw at him.

‘He has a capacious memory, a real love of language and he was resilient,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t be prouder.’

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Chris Bumbaca, USA Today, June 1, 2023; photo credit: Nick Wass, AP.

“Scott Remer, a former speller who coached six of the finalists onstage Thursday, said he began working with Shah about three years ago. ‘One of the things that really impresses me about Dev is his perseverance and his commitment,’ Remer said. ‘He is extraordinarily mature, self-motivated.’

At 14 years old, this was his last chance. And he responded by training around-the-clock, including two hours per week with Remer. ‘It’s hard as a (middle schooler) to have that delayed gratification,’ Remer said.

Over three days at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Shah displayed poise onstage, asked the proper questions to ascertain as much information he could from the pronouncers and used his ‘prodigious’ command of word stems and roots. ‘It became increasingly hard for me to stump him, which is always a good thing,’ Remer said. ‘I just really admire him as a person and it’s been a great privilege.’“

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Scott Remer, The Guardian, May 31, 2023; Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Thus far, though, the students from abroad who participate in the National Spelling Bee only compete in small numbers. But more seriously internationalizing the National Spelling Bee – inviting many more international competitors to DC – would revitalize the Bee, giving it a fresh identity. It would also be a wonderful opportunity to promote cosmopolitanism and cultural diplomacy. During Bee Week, parents, coaches, and family members socialize and create community, and spellers befriend one another. Affording elementary- and middle-schoolers the opportunity to make friends across borders would be a good way to inoculate them against prejudice and ignorance.

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Ben Nuckols, Associated Press, May 31, 2023; photo credit: AP Photo/Nick Wass.

“Scott Remer, who coaches six of the finalists — Dev, Pranav, Dhruv Subramanian, Shradha Rachamreddy, Arth Dalsania, and Sarah Fernandes — instructs his pupils to pace themselves and ask any question that might be helpful.

‘Generally speaking, the kids who ask more questions are the kids who know more, actually, which is maybe counterintuitive,’ Remer said.”

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Sarah Gambles, Deseret News, June 1, 2023; photo credit: Nathan Howard, Associated Press.

“Done properly, spelling is applied linguistics, a process of logical reasoning, like chess; words are like puzzles or math equations,” Scott Remer wrote for The Guardian in 2021.

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Scott Remer,The Guardian, May 31, 2022; photo credit: Kevin Lamarque, Reuters.

“I have fond memories of my time as a speller and would venture to say that I am among the Bee’s biggest fans. I hope that, by reinstating RSVBee (which Scripps itself has stated is a matter of fairness), reconsidering the vocabulary and spell-off components of the competition, and taking steps to reinvigorate the world of regional bees, Scripps will ensure that the National Spelling Bee is buzzworthy for many years to come.”

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Orion Donovan-Smith, The Spokesman-Review, June 3, 2022; photo credit: Orion Donovan-Smith

“But Remer said spelling is about more than rote memorization.

‘It encourages a love of languages,’ he said. ‘It encourages an appreciation of different cultures and of nuance and sophistication.’

‘A spelling bee is inherently about luck and chance, because you can’t control the words you get. Participating in this contest teaches kids that not everything in life is controllable. And I think that encourages a kind of empathy, because it allows you to appreciate the ways in which people’s situations in life are not always their own responsibility or fault.’”

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Published on July 7, 2021, in The Athletic, by Seth Davis; photo credit: The Athletic.

“In an ecosystem replete with highly motivated high achievers, Scott and Ashrita make for a powerhouse pairing. She is a 14-year-old prodigy from Leesburg, Va., who is competing in her fourth Scripps National Spelling Bee, and the first time as a finalist. One former speller turned blogger pegs her as one of two “prohibitive favorites” remaining in the contest. Remer, 27, is a two-time former finalist (he finished fourth in 2008) who wrote one of the most popular textbooks on the subject, Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.”

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Ben Nuckols, May 28, 2020, Associated Press; Photo credit: AP/SpellPundit.

“Every year as I tutor kids I’m constantly finding new words, not just new words but new words that are difficult, have interesting definitions, are an appropriate length — words that are perfect spelling bee words,” said Remer said. “I don’t think the problem is that those sorts of spelling bee words don’t exist.”

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Originally published in The Guardian on May 15, 2020, co-authored by Scott Remer and Simone Kaplan

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Originally published in The Atlantic on May 31, 2019, written by Ashley Fetters

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Originally published in The Washington Post on May 30, 2019, written by Orion Donovan-Smith and Kayla Epstein

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Originally published in US News on May 28, 2019, written by Ben Nuckols

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