The Great Australian Spelling Bee

Speed Spell

One by one, spellers must stand inside the spell gate and spell as many words as they can in 45 seconds. Spelling a word incorrectly will end their turn regardless of time left.

This is usually the first challenge on elimination days. The top spellers, depending on the episode, will be safe from elimination.

Flash Cards

Prior to the challenge, the spellers are introduced to a theme of the words that are going to be spelled for the challenge, whether it'd be a band of instruments for the theme of music or a dinosaur for the theme of prehistoric.

Then the spellers receive a letter, whether it would be picking a token out of a bag, cracking a dinosaur egg to collect the token, grabbing a lollipop with a token on it, or finding it inside a bag attached to the speller's instrument. The tokens are either red or blue and has a letter spelt from A to all the way to the last letter depending of the number of spellers left. The spellers are then arranged in two lines: blue on one side, red on the other and in order of A, B, C and so on.

The challenge is to spell the word relating to the theme correctly by writing it on a tablet within ten seconds. The speller who spells the word correctly will be through to the next round and the other speller will not be safe. This continues for all pairs. If in any case the pairs spell the word correctly for six rounds, a tiebreaker round will happen. To win, the speller who finishes their word first immediately shows their flash cards to the pronouncer.

Spell Check

The remaining spellers are required to stand in front of their buzzer while a word is shown on screen. The word may be correct or incorrect in which case if it's incorrect, the speller who buzzes in first is allowed to spell the given word correctly. If correct, the speller is safe. If incorrect, or if the spellers buzzes in at a correct word, they are locked out and they go into the final Spelling Bee. A certain amount of spellers may be safe.

Spelling Bee

The remaining spellers follow normal Spelling Bee rules. Only two spellers may be safe in every round, while the rest are eliminated.

Show And Spell Individual Edition

Normal Show And Spell rules apply, except players don't earn points for their team, they do for themselves.

Letter By Letter Knock Out Mode

Normal Letter By Letter rules apply, except they are not in teams, and if you make a mistake, you're out of the round.

Dictionary Dash

This challenge featured dictionaries, which the competitors must find a word in. The first person to find the word in this challenge would get an advantage in speed spell, which is to select your theme first. The others followed in order of who won dictionary dash in the next rounds.

Team Immunity Challenges

Spellers choose a coloured token out of a bag in which that colour is the team they are in. In every challenge, a team will be knocked out and cannot get immunity for the next elimination.

Letter By Letter

The team members must spell a word, saying a letter one by one in the order they are in. If a speller thinks the speller before them spells the word wrong, they must say 'Next word.' to continue with the next word. They must spell as many words as they can within 90 seconds.

Show and Spell

Like Flash Cards, spellers are introduced to a theme of words the spellers must spell. The words, like Spell Check, are shown on a screen. Unlike Spell Check, all the letters except the 1st letter are not shown, and are replaced with underscores. The competitors must guess the word, following a series of clues, and after they guess, spell it correctly to gain a point for their team.

Team Spelling Bee

Normal spelling bee rules apply. The remaining two teams have their members spell alternating. Spelling a word incorrectly will force the speller to be knocked out of the challenge. The team with spellers still left wins immunity.

Season One

Season one first aired on 3 August 2015 and concluded on 8 September 2015. The season was hosted by Grant Denyer & Chrissie Swan. It was won by Anirudh who received $50,000 education scholarship, $10,000 worth of equipment for his school, a Macquarie Dictionary, a Sprout computer, and a HP Pro Slate 8 tablet.

Season Two

Season two first aired on 17 July 2016, Grant Denyer & Chrissie Swan both returned as hosts. Poor ratings for the initial episodes of the season saw the series moved from Sundays to the lower viewed Saturday from its fifth episode.

International adaptations

In 2016 there has been a Thai series. A UK series based on the format will air in the United Kingdom on Sky 1 under the title The Big Spell.