My hardest words were anorak, ankh, isopleth, caparison, argillaceous, umm and probably some other words I don’t remember.
There were three words during the bee I would have missed…rococco which would have been embarrassing. I’m not even sure I spelled it correctly now. Kanji, the language, I had never seen before and would have blown. And a third one I don’t remember now.
I did not watch it.
What I think about it is that it is wonderful as my first real job I got largely because the person hiring had just watched the movie and noticed my win on my resume. 
I suppose you have a valid point, but it is still a spelling bee and not a vocabulary bee. Go ahead and call it a vocabulary/spelling bee in that case.
They also, a few years ago, started doing written tests so that only the top 60 or so spellers actually compete in the bee itself. So 200 something kids show up, take a test, and only a fourth of them actually spell at the microphone. I think that is silly.
Nowadays I can spell about 1/3 of the words asked towards the end.
Sounds good, but:
So, I’d say, if it’s a spelling bee, concentrate on the spelling. Most winners IIRC go on to have extensive vocabularies anyway. (The above words were from the 2013 Bee.)
It’s a relevant point in that it really needs to be either a spelling bee or a vocabulary bee. Either you’re testing spelling or you’re not. If I studied “kaumographer” but have no idea what it means then in a spelling bee I should get full credit, correct?
You are correct also regarding winners’ vocabulary. It is largely correlational - for example I read a monstrous amount when young which both helped me in spelling and my vocabulary. Also, a good speller will have some knowledge of common roots - I would venture that brachydactyly means short fingers. They are valuable in that any time I get brachy - X and the definition involves short, I’ve just knocked out half the word. This is assuming brachy means short.
Did all the cool and popular kids in the Geography Bee make fun of you at your school too?
I would have been champion but I mis-heard the word. It was encourage. I swear he pronounced it en-curr-ich.
I lost on the word “knave”. I misheard it as “naive”.
Nice!
It’s a sweet movie.
By “too”, are you implying the cool and popular kids that weren’t in the Geography Bee also made fun of me?
Or are you implying the non cool and non popular kids in the Geography Bee also made fun of me?
Either way it really hurts.
Pronunciation is a huge deal as it is fairly subjective although it shouldn’t be. I asked the pronouncer to repeat one of my words about 15 times trying to get an edge.
When you are staring at diphthongs and other weird symbols, it’s very difficult to pronounce words you’ve never seen before the exact same way every time, if you are actually trying to follow the syllables and not just repeating what you just said.
So no General Principles of Spellin’, just straight up rote memorization? I know English is a highly irregular language, w/ spelling as with anything else, but I’d think you’d want some tricks up your sleeve just in case you met a word that was entirely unfamiliar. Of course, the killer words that they like to go for are typically foreign borrowings or foreign roots, and there, outside of the good old stalwarts like Greek, the rules by which we transliterate them are often shifting, never mind the underlying spelling rules of the language, if it’s even a language where the notion of “spelling rules” makes sense.
Also, I’m guessing that, much like a Scrabble champion, you weren’t much interested in the actual meanings of the words?
ETA: this thread is obviously moving too fast for me. Re post #21, though–they actually asked you to spell “umm”? o.O
I was eighth grade champion, without even trying hard. I learned to read at an early age and devoured books. My 6th grade teacher noticed that in our class bees, I’d cream everybody else, including the ‘smart’ kids. I could always just see the word in my head, even if I was unfamiliar with it. While the class was reading, she’d have me come up to her desk and spell for her. I wasn’t much of a scholar in the eighth grade, so it was a complete surprise to my English teacher when I blitzed his ‘A’ students. The girls went wild. Wait, no they didn’t. 
Yes there were various tricks that most good spellers have. As mentioned before, common foreign roots are key. Also general knowledge of foreign language constructions is a plus. For example, if it’s German it’s almost certainly a “k” and not a “c”.
Rote memorization, in all likelihood, isn’t going to get it done as there just too many words. You will have to think on your feet at some point. I hadn’t studied “ankh”, but I figured out the trick (well took my guess at it) from Tutenkhamen.
Meanings were for the most part useless, except what you could carry over to other words, e.g. roots and the like.
Part of speech is also big. At the local bee, I had to defeat the person who got 3rd place in the National the year before. The next year, his last, he received “pellicle” and couldn’t get past the idea that it was “pelical” even though the definition didn’t match. If he’d realized it was a noun and not an adjective, he would have regrouped and it might have come to mind.
And no I didn’t spell umm.
I was on a blind date with a girl who was bragging to me how good of a speller she was. “I have the kids flip to a word in the dictionary and I can always spell it.” I let it go.
I’d add that a lot of the words they’re giving kids today are insanely difficult, and many of them are not heard in everyday conversation unless you’re in the sciences. Compare recent winners with older winners on this list. Autochthonous? Really? One would almost have to have an eidetic memory to compete, it would seem.
There’s an interesting aspect outsiders don’t realize though…While you are correct that words have seemingly gotten harder, a word that is seemingly impossible is actually easy if it has been on a Scripps Howard list, especially a more recent one. So say a marginally common word that is marginally hard to spell, like ankh, would be more dreaded by spellers than an “impossible” word that was on a list three years ago.
Plus if you play Magic the Gathering you’d know autochthonous from “autochthonous wurm”. 
A kid could walk up and knock out three bizarrely hard words in a row but they might just be from lists and he actually is an inferior speller to a girl who misses an “easy” one like say “anorak”.
Eidetic is not necessary. Once you get the knack for it, you get to the point where you just start to learn the words as you see them. Obviously some will be better than others, but I don’t have a photographic memory or anything. But if I’ve ever seen it, I can probably spell it.
Thus why the words that have never been on a list are the true “toughies”.
Just wondering - was the word “Antidisestablishmentarianism” on any of your lists?
Famous long word from a game show ages ago…