This type of media attention, though, is not unique to Jaiswal. So, I ended up being termed the fan favorite by ESPN.” Jaiswal described how as a result of sharing his story, he became a bit of a fan favorite among the viewers: “I guess people liked my personality when I was on stage. “Everything after I made it to D.C., like the perfect score, making it to the finals, being ranked number one before going to the finals, was all a surprise. I just wanted to go for fun, basically,” Jaiswal said. Because all I really wanted was to make it back to the bee because I had fun in 2010 when my sister was there and I had a lot of fun in 2012. The moment was made especially profound due to Jaiswal’s failure to qualify for the national bee during the previous two years. “I was pretty happy when the longer video took off of me as well, because that was a special moment for me,” he said.
Jaiswal graciously accepts defeat, thanking everyone for the opportunity with a wide smile on his face. The longer video, which Jaiswal alluded to, showed his reaction after finding out he had been eliminated. Because like personally, I don’t see what’s funny. “It was just a shorter clip, which I’ve always been confused by.
Originally, it wasn’t the whole video that took off from there,” Jaiswal said. “Yeah, I’ve always sort of felt that there are two camps of people who have seen that video. The video that went viral on Vine, though, was not the extent of the story. Since the debut of the video in 2015, the clip has accumulated millions of views on Youtube alone, making Jaiswal a bit of a campus celebrity. A video of Jaiswal repeating the word before attempting the spelling quickly went viral on Vine, a now-defunct short-form video service that featured six-second clips. Jaiswal, who replaced the ‘y’ with an ‘i,’ shot to stardom in a matter of seconds after misspelling the word.
The word in question? Iridocyclitis, or, according to Merriam-Webster - the official dictionary of spelling bee competitions - “inflammation of the iris and ciliary body.” Don’t ask for a language of origin. It was in this final that Jaiswal ultimately struck out, although the disqualifying word proved to be perhaps more fruitful than any victory. Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. The bee is only open to competitors who have not yet turned 15, completed their eighth grade year, or won the bee before. Its longevity, though, is juxtaposed by one of its startling hallmark features.
Since its beginning, the bee has run every year except from 1943-1945 due to World War II and 2020 due to the pandemic. Started in 1925, the bee first began when a newspaper out of Louisville, KY, consolidated various local spelling competitions until it was eventually taken over by the E.W. This pinnacle, as well as the increased media attention, is primarily due to one overarching factor: the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And, for the particularly serious, their introduction to a national media environment that has made spelling bees a cultural phenomenon. For Dev Jaiswal ’23, though, (and the other 11 million students who compete in school sponsored spelling bees each year) 14 years old was pretty much the sweet spot: middle school, for the serious, marks the peak of their spelling abilities. Whatever you choose to pursue, the assumption is that you will be pretty average. Maybe you are trying out for the soccer team or band. You are in middle school you are learning about algebra and ancient civilizations, puberty, and prose. At 14 years old, you are not the best at most things.
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