Hardly -- it's all list-memorizing. I competed in
that thing for five years, and my best finish was
third in the Central Florida division -- I never even
got to Nationals, and while academically talented
students could compete at the county level without
embarrassing themselves, every player I ever saw who had a
legitimate chance at making the national competition was an
inveterate list-memorizer with a limited understanding of
the words he or she was expected to spell. (Not me,
though -- I had neither the patience nor the desire to
take time away from my life in order to memorize
meaningless ciphers, and while I was willing to compete as
long as it cost me nothing and I was reasonably
successful, I was more or less thoroughly disgusted with the
whole concept by the time my eligibility ran out.) All
the National Spelling Bee is, is a lot of
home-schooled children whose knowledge is not remarkable but
has been warped in one narrow direction.
And
don't get me started on the "once-and-out" rule...