Spelling Bee play-offs start today

With 32 episodes of The Daily Star Spelling Bee already aired, four out of six finalists of this season are Haseen Hasnain, Hurdco International School; Saif Rahman, Regent College; Naiyareen Mayeen, Sunbeams and Argho Roy, Anandaniketan, are the contestants to have crossed the hurdles so far. Argho from Anandaniketan is the only finalist from outside of Dhaka this season.

The Daily Star Spelling Bee play-off starts tonight in Channel i at 7:50pm.

Russell T. Ahmed, CEO, Champs21.com said, "This year we have introduced two play-off rounds. From our experiences of the last two seasons, we realised that the quality of semi-finalists is exceptional and anyone could have been a finalist. So this year, we are introducing the play-off round where the second and third highest scorer of every semi-final episode will get another chance to play at the finals."

This a second chance for the participants to get back in the game. Two more spots are open in the finalists' line-up, and the next two episodes will reveal the last two finalists for this season.

The competition is getting tougher with the contestants now allowed just 20 seconds to spell a word correctly.

This year, Champs21.com has developed and released an Android smartphone app, Spell Champs, which some 10,000 viewers downloaded and got into the thick of the Spelling Bee competition. Through the app, the audience had the opportunity to win 15 tablet computers over 15 weeks of competition.