Our annual look at the words that challenged the Scripps Spelling Bee champs to see how many are recognized by the spell check in Microsoft Word. 2023 wasn’t a good year for Word with a disappointing score that would shame some 14 year olds.
Here’s a selection of the last round words from the 2023 Bee, starting with the winning word then others in alphabetical order.
Microsoft Word’s score: 9 out of 29
That’s a really bad result compared to last year (Word recognized 30 out of 35 words).
Here’s how Word ‘scored’ vs. the Spelling Bee champs in 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 , 2014 and 2013.
Our purpose isn’t to make fun of Word (that’s a little bonus <g> ). It does show that Word’s online dictionary isn’t the ‘last word’ (pun intended) on what’s a legitimate or correctly spelled word.
In other words, just because there’s a red squiggly line doesn’t mean the word is wrong.
Microsoft Word vs the 2021 Words of the Champions
More changes for Word’s Spelling and Grammar
Zillion, Jillion and other big ‘numbers’ in Microsoft Word
