Spell Cast is a spelling game show in Singapore featuring children between the ages of nine and twelve. Season one aired between 5 June 2007 - 31 July 2007 and season two started airing in early 2010. It was hosted by Shane Mardjuki in its first season and by Sarah Tan in its second season. Dramatic changes took place between the first two seasons, such as the game format, as well as the lack of a prize money for season two.
The first season of Spell Cast was hosted by Shane Mardjuki, and featured a prize consisting of a trophy and $10,000. There were three main rounds in this season: The first round required contestants to select the correct spelling from three variations of a word, the second required contestants to fill in a missing letter in a word, and the third was an oral spelling round of tic-tac-toe, where contestants would have to spell out a word verbally after being given the word and its definition. An estimated 1,200 children participated in the auditions, and only 48 made it into the qualifier rounds which were aired on local broadcaster MediaCorp's Channel 5.
Each qualifier round featured eight contestants, with eight questions in the first round. Only two contestants proceeded from the qualifiers to the two semi-final episodes, which comprised a total of twelve participants, six in each episode. In the semi-finals, the amount of questions in the first round was reduced to six.
In the finals, four contestants remained, namely: Jesse Chang, Sheena Lee, Russell Soh and Jayesh Melvani. In the first round, Jesse was eliminated after receiving the lowest number of points amongst contestants. Jayesh was then eliminated in the second round, however it was pointed out by host Shane Mardjuki that he was the youngest amongst the four finalists, being only nine years old. During the last round of spelling tic-tac-toe, Russell was allowed to start the round first as he had attained the highest amount of points in the first two rounds. After an intense round, with words such as 'rehabilitate', 'excruciating' and the winning word, 'hieroglyph', Russell won the competition, and received the Spell Cast trophy, along with a cash prize of S$10,000.
The following season of Spell Cast came almost three years after the first season ended, bringing with it numerous changes. Firstly, the host of the show was changed; instead of Shane Mardjuki, Sarah Tan hosted this season. The game was reconstructed completely, although maintaining the original three-round system, albeit without elimination between rounds, hence giving those who had done badly in earlier rounds a chance to catch up with others. Also, no prize money was featured in this season of Spell Cast. It was also worth noting that instead of airing the show on the more popular Channel 5 at 8.30 pm as was with the first season, season two of Spell Cast was aired on the recently-introduced okto channel on Sunday at 11.30am.
In the first round, contestants were tasked with spelling a given word on a keyboard. In the second round, contestants had to take turns at verbally spelling a given word. In this round, if a contestant misspelled his word, another contestant could buzz in to have another chance at spelling it correctly. In the final round, contestants had to buzz in to spell given words. A total time for all the questions was kept at one minute and forty-five seconds.