Michael Kolagani, speller 440, is one of several spellers over the last two days who has simply asked Dr. Bailly to give him everything.
The Texas fifth grader's word was "arcane," a word that means known only to a very few : mysterious.
Michael spelled it correctly.
So when a speller like Michael asks for everything, what does he get?
The word's pronunciation, for one thing, and any alternate pronunciations. Spellers also get the definition, the part of speech and the word's origin. And they get the word in a sentence.
All those pieces are clues that can help spellers suss out the right letters as they're trying to figure out their words.
They can also ask for all that information individually, but lately -- sometimes because their moms have asked them to -- spellers are asking for all the information at once.