How do you spell a National Bee legend? J-A-C-Q-U-E-S B-A-I-L-L-Y!
By |
Beth Saulnier
For Jacques Bailly, PhD ’97, the winning word at the 1980 Scripps National Spelling Bee was “elucubrate” – which, aptly enough, means “to work out or express by studious effort.” At 14, Bailly was crowned America’s spelling champion, taking home $1,000 and a nice set of encyclopedias. (Remember those?)
But his career in orthography didn’t end there.
Since 2003, he has been the Bee’s head pronouncer—an unflappable presence on national TV (in 2026, it airs May 27–28 on the Ion channel) who reads words aloud and answers contestants’ queries about definition, usage, language of origin, and more.
“I think it’s kind of amusing, and bemusing, that people pay attention to me, because I’m just there to deliver the words,” says Bailly, a classics professor at the University of Vermont.
