Dhaka finally showcased its spelling prowess in The Daily Star Spelling Bee competition held at the National Museum in Shahbagh on Sunday and Monday.

The Dhaka divisional round went on for two days as over 600 spellers qualified for it, with 300 students participating each day. From the 300 students, only 90 contestants made it to the oral section of the contest from the written section each day.

During the written section, participants had to spell words such as "Ostrobogulous” and “Grandiloquence". However, spellers were so impressive that the organisers, champs21.com, were forced to choose 90 participants for the oral section instead of the planned 70.

After a gruelling first round, 30 students remained in the second round of the oral section having to spell words such as "Poinsettia” and "Sepulchral". The words continued to get more difficult as only 13 spellers qualified for the TV round. This led to a tiebreaker among the remaining 17 spellers for the last five spots in theTVround.

Finally after two days, 36 winners from Dhaka will join the other 37 contestants from

the other divisions in the TV round. That makes a total of 73 spellers participating in the TV round, which starts from Aprils.

In a span of over two months, the competition has come to its peak with 73 best spellers from the nearly one lakh students from all over the country that participated in the Internet round.

Majed Abdur Rahman, a class K physics teacher of Scholastica School, had interesting opinions about the divisional round competition.

“It is a very good initiative by The Daily Star but I think there should be more consistency with the words. Some spellers got really tough words while others got relatively easy ones in the same round,” he said.

“But in the end I think there are some very good spellers who made it through to theTV round and that is the main goal here,” he added.

Majed also welcomed the idea of aTVcrew present at all times during the competition and echoed Champs21.com CEO RussellT. Ahmed's sentiment that “It will help build some leadership qualities in the participants along with spelling. If you're a good speller but end up getting stage fright and make a silly mistake, then you've choked.”

After all is said and done, the viewers will not be disappointed with the quality of the spellers and they make for a fascinating show that will be aired on Channel i every Wednesday and Thursday at 7:50pm.