(From left) Russell T Ahmed, CEO of champs21.com; Syed Hammadul Karim, deputy general manager, MetLife Alico Bangladesh; Hafiz Ahmed, managing director, Fast Corporation, Faber-Castell; Ruhi M Ahmed, chief of Corporate Social Responsibility, Public Relations and Communications, BSRM Group; Shykh Seraj, director and head of news, Channel I; and Iqbal Menon, category manager, GlaxoSmithKline Bangladesh Ltd, at the official launching of the third season of The Daily Star Spelling Bee in the capital's The Daily Star Centre yesterday. Photo: Star

The third season of The Daily Star Spelling Bee was officially launched in the capital yesterday, to boost the practice of vocabulary among secondary school students.
The spelling competition, comprising a game show on television, is hosted by champs21.com and powered by Horlicks.
Spelling Bee is organised for students from class VI-X of both English and Bangla medium schools from all over the country. SSC examinees and O level candidates are not eligible to participate however.
The contest bearing the message, "Spelling is now a game", includes three stages, of which the television game show is the last.
"We want to promote the idea that spelling expertise is not something requiring intensive study. Rather, it's a fun game," CEO of champs21.com Russell T Ahmed told the launch at The Daily Star Centre.
"A person's mind is a prisoner of the extent of his vocabulary," stated Editor and Publisher of The Daily Star Mahfuz Anam.
In the first round, students will play the spelling game Spellato online on the champs21.com website--www.champs21.com--from February 1 to February 28.
The organisers will also visit 200 schools in all seven divisions where students cannot play the game online to select participants of the second round by hosting spelling tests.

In addition, 10 district fairs will be held--in Mymensingh, Tangail, Dinajpur, Bogra, Pabna, Kushtia, Jessore, Narayanganj and Comilla.  All words in the game are selected from The Daily Star.  "The online game no longer needs to be played only on the computer, as this year we have developed an application for Android phones to increase participation," said Russell.  Both the game and app can be downloaded for free unlike the previous years when the game had to be bought, he said. "We had 2,20,032 gamers last year. We hope to cross 3 lakh this year by providing the game for free."  The top scorers of the first round will qualify for the second step when organisers will visit the seven divisional headquarters and hold written and oral exams to screen out participants for the television phase.
The finale will start with 96 participants, and span across 36 episodes to be aired on Channel i, the official telecast partner.
In every episode, BSRM Group will donate books to an underprivileged school every time a contestant scores full marks in a segment of the competition.