WASHINGTON The Scripps National Spelling Bee will be the coolest 80-year-old on prime-time television this week.

A record-breaking 286 contestants are preparing for their close-ups here never mind if television lights sparkle off braces and spectacles and the pregame jitters come calling as acne.

TV broadcasts from Washington on Thursday will fuel the nation's crush on the bee, and each contestant knows he or she could have a star turn in a uniquely American drama.

"The media attention doesn't faze them," Scripps Bee Director Paige Kimble said. "In fact, they crave it, and they thrive in that environment."

Indeed, spellers set goals to make it to semifinals on ESPN or finals on ABC.

Kimble ushered the event to prime-time television last year for the first broadcast of live finals on ABC.

She's the 1981 champion. Winning word: "sarcophagus" (a stone coffin).

Last year's champ, 14-year-old Kerry Close of Spring Lake, N.J., was an ESPN veteran from previous title attempts.

"I just tried to ignore all the cameras and everything and just focus on spelling the words," Kerry said.

In fact, she had fun in the media spotlight and recently watched her victory again.

Kerry's winning word: "Ursprache" (a parent language).

Bee cool might have started with ESPN's first broadcast of the contest in 1994.

Judging from more than 700 video results for "spelling bee" on YouTube, plus attention from books, films and Broadway, word games are enjoying an extended 15 minutes of fame.

A bee has the feel of a sports competition, part of why it wins over Americans.

An announcer speaks in hushed, tense tones while a pigtailed contestant makes a spelling practice run, jabbing letters across her palm in silence. A boy faints dead away at the microphone but rises from almost certain defeat for a comeback. A speller screams out the letters of her winning word, the thinking girl's version of the touchdown dance.

It's a sports movie in the making.

"You can map (out) stories of success over overwhelming odds or of a team preparing for a spelling bee," cultural analyst Eric Drown of George Washington University said. "And the whole school's pulling for this kid because he beat all of them, but they all prepared together."

One of the great American stories is success that brings fame and due recognition, Drown said.

Both are courtesy of ABC and ESPN for Scripps Bee participants.

George Thampy was a bee champ before it was too cool.

While he was the son of immigrants, the event helped him tap into the richness of a language he affectionately called a "great mongrel tongue."

Ideals about success that appeal to Americans play out in the bee.

"To do well, you must work hard," the Harvard University student said. "But at the same time there's an indelible element of luck."

As his parents tell it, he was reading the newspaper when he was 3 years old and saw an article on a spelling bee champ.

"I told my parents I wanted to have a trophy like that. I wanted to be that person," Thampy said.

In 2000, he was.

Winning word: "demarche" (an action or maneuver by a diplomat).

Thampy imagines the first spelling bee started in a one-room schoolhouse somewhere on the frontier. He predicts the bee will be around as long as America is.