from the U.S., Canada, The Bahamas, New Zealand, Asia, and Europe covering a certain area and conducting their own regional spelling bees to send spellers to the national level. Sponsorship is available on a limited basis to daily and weekly newspapers serving English-speaking populations around the world. Each sponsor organizes a spelling bee program in its community with the cooperation of area school officials: public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, and home schools. Schools enroll with the national office to ensure their students are eligible to participate and to receive the materials needed to conduct classroom and school bees. During enrollment, school bee coordinators receive their local sponsor's program-specific information—local dates, deadlines, and participation guidelines. National-competition format Preliminaries The Preliminaries consists of a test (Preliminaries Test) delivered by computer on Tuesday and two rounds of oral spelling onstage on Wednesday. Spellers may earn up to 36 points during the Preliminaries: up to 30 points on the Preliminaries Test, three points for correctly spelling in Round Two and three points for correctly spelling in Round Three. Round One The Preliminaries Test (also called round one) has four sections, most of which administered by a computer system. Round One of the preliminaries consists of two sections; Section A consists of spelling 24 words, identical for each contestant, while Section B contains 24 multiple-choice vocabulary questions; only 12 questions in each section are actually scored, awarding one point each. Section C and D, preliminary rounds two and three, each consist of a single multiple-choice vocabulary question unique to every contestant and worth three points. A contestant can score up to 30 points in this round. History of Round One Round One was a written spelling test, and has changed in format several times. In the few years prior to 2008, Round One consisted of a 25-word, multiple-choice written test. However, in 2010, changes were made in the formatting of this test. It consisted of 25 words, sometimes called "the written round". All spellers gathered at the Maryland Ballroom by 8:00 a.m. Jacques Bailly, the Bee's official pronouncer (also the 1980 champion) pronounced each word, its language of origin, definition, and usage in a sentence. Spellers are given a 30-second pause in which to write down their word with the two pens given to them, and then Bailly repeated the word and all information. There was another 30-second pause, and then they moved onto the