Whiz Kid of the Week: Scott Remer

Age: 17

School: Beachwood High School

Accomplishment: Published a book as a sophomore helping others win the Scripps National Spelling Bee

Key to awesomeness: Eighth grade ended on a high note for Scott Remer.

After having been in spelling bees since the fourth grade, Scott made it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee — the annual national tournament that has grown so large ESPN now airs it live — and placed fourth in the nation.

Due to age restrictions, that was the last year Scott could compete on the spelling bee ciruit, but it wasn’t the last contribution he would make to the competition.

“I thought it would be a shame let all of this knowledge go to waste,” said Scott, now 17. “I wanted to share what I learned about how to spell and spelling in general with future spellers.”

He did that by writing Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a kind of handbook for spellers competing in the big show. The book was self published through CreateSpace, an independent publishing site, and can be purchased at Amazon.com or through Scott’s website, www.spellingbeebook.com.

“I decided to sit down and sort of systematize what I had learned,” he explained. “Put it to paper, organize it and turn it into a book that I could give to future spellers as my legacy. That’s what I think my book is.”

The book, which he began in the summer of 2008, took him 16 months to write and features 10,000 practice words organized by language of origin and tables of observation where he makes remarks about rules that govern each language, including rules on how to spell a certain sound.

Learning those rules were the key to his strategy during the tournaments.

“A lot of people think that spelling’s just rote memorization,” he said. “I think that’s a misguided approach because it’s more important that you understand the rules of each language so that way you can apply them to words you’ve never seen before.”

Chances are the spellers are going to encounter words they’ve never seen, he said, but if they know the language of origin and the various rules for those languages, they have a better chance of spelling the words correctly.

“The memorization thing tends to work on the regional level, but once you get to nationals it doesn’t cut it,” he said.

Scott said spelling has always interested him because of “the pursuit of knowledge” it entails. It’s the same reason he’s involved in Beachwood High School’s Academic Challenge team, which placed second in the small school division of the National Academic Quiz Tournament in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend. Scott will be captain of the team next year.

“Not only do you have to have a lot of knowledge, but you also have to be able to contextualize it, figure out what it is they’re looking for, figure out the connections and buzz in,” he said.