Scott Remer has positioned himself at the center of elite preparation for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a market where families increasingly treat coaching like a key part of the competition. Remer, who describes himself as the only full-time spelling bee coach, charges up to $180 an hour for private lessons and also takes a performance-based share of some winners’ prize money. For this year’s bee in Washington, which begins Tuesday and ends Thursday, that pricing and his teaching style are shaping how competitors think about who to hire as the field narrows to a small group of finalists.
Remer’s prominence is visible in the competitive history of recent champions. When Dev Shah won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2023 and Faizan Zaki won last year, both champions posed for photos on the confetti-strewn stage with Remer, who was holding up his book “Words of Wisdom,” according to the report. Shah, who is now 17, later described Remer as influential in spelling, saying Remer is “probably one of the most influential figures in spelling over the past 10 years.”
Remer’s business model blends full-time coaching with a scaled client list aimed at maximizing repetition and competition readiness. The report says Remer has coached five national champions and, since the bee resumed after pandemic disruptions in 2020 and 2021, has expanded his practice as coaching became more widely adopted. He claims 34 spellers as students this year and says he has worked with at least 29 spellers in each of the past four bees, and he charges more than many other coaches: up to $180 for an hourlong private lesson.
In addition to the hourly rate, Remer’s contract includes a bonus tied to results. The report says that if spellers finish in the top 10 and win a cash prize, Remer receives up to 10% of their winnings, which he described as “a performance-based bonus.” Faizan’s father, Zaki Anwar, said he negotiated a reduced rate of $120 an hour for Remer’s services because Faizan was already an accomplished speller, and the report says Remer then took home 7% of Faizan’s $52,500 champion prize, a bonus of $3,675. Anwar said, “After winning, it doesn’t really matter.”
Remer’s supporters say the cost aligns with outcomes, even when coaching is intense. Faizan said, “Even though his classes are more expensive, it’s definitely worth it,” adding, “I saw results.” More broadly, the report describes Remer as earnest and gregarious about spelling, portraying his coaching as a passion he traces to his own disappointing fourth-place finish in 2008, his final year as a speller. Remer said, “This is really about the love of language and the love of the competition. Part of it is once you’re stung by the bee, there’s kind of no going back,” and added, “I’m not going to deny that it pays well, because it does. But I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Remer’s instruction focuses on language roots, patterns, and exceptions, with the goal of enabling spellers to reason out words they have never seen. The report says he drills students so they can understand languages deeply enough to infer spelling even for unfamiliar terms, and it cites his work with Shah as an example, including the word “rommack” in 2023. The same approach can also be a mismatch for some students, however, because Remer’s methods and his fees can push some families toward less expensive coaching or different teaching styles.
Several coaches and families described in the report offer an alternative view of what is necessary to reach top finishes. Navneeth Murali, a University of Pennsylvania student who competed through 2020 and now coaches spellers for about $50 an hour, said, “I found it prohibitively expensive,” and added, “It wasn’t a realistic option for me.” Grace Walters, described as having coached 2022 champion Harini Logan and several other champions, charges $75 an hour and said she takes a smaller number of students; she emphasized, “I’m very much quality over quantity. It’s really important to me that I’m able to get to know each speller as a whole person, not just as a speller, and tailor my curriculum to them as individuals,” while also arguing, “If everyone was doing it like me, there wouldn’t be enough coaches for all the spellers out there.”
For some competitors, Remer’s style has been a reason to switch coaches. The report says Sree Vidya Siliveri was coached by Remer before a 60th-place finish in 2024 but did not respond well to his methods; her father, Sreedhar Siliveri, said they looked for alternatives and “found some of the fresh, like, high school students who can be friendlier and charge less.” Another competitor, Simone Kaplan, who finished runner-up to the “octo-champs” of 2019, said she appreciated Remer’s tough coaching but that it is not for every student, describing how the pressure can become difficult for a child. Kaplan said, “Scott is a true logophile, a master of languages. He pushes his students to keep up with him,” and warned, “That can inspire some spellers to learn and succeed, but it can also leave a student feeling like they’ve disappointed him if they don’t spell every word right. And that’s difficult for a kid.”
Remer said he aims to balance toughness with support as he calibrates to each child’s needs and personality. He said, “I try to be tough but fair, and I also try to modulate my teaching methods, based on the kids’ needs and the kids’ personalities,” while acknowledging, “Whether I’m always successful at that is I guess an open question.” The report also describes his own education and career path: Remer graduated from Yale in 2016 and earned a master’s degree from Cambridge a year later, published his first study guide, “Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee,” in 2010, and has written other books since then. The report says he worked for the Council on Foreign Relations and as a communications coordinator for an LGBTQ-friendly synagogue in New York before becoming a full-time spelling coach in 2020.
The competition itself does not endorse coaching, according to the report, but the role of tutors has become difficult to avoid in the bee’s preparation ecosystem. Corrie Loeffler, the bee’s executive director, described coaching as inevitable given the competition’s intensity and said, “It’s hard work, it’s study ethic, it’s perseverance,” while adding, “These kids are doing pretty incredible things at a really high level, especially at a young age, and I want them to be able to take credit for that themselves, knowing that it’s a community and they’ve had so much support along the way.”