Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is an Australian television comedy panel show on the ABC, created and presented by Guy Montgomery and co-hosted by Aaron Chen (later Sam Campbell), based on the New Zealand TV show of the same name.
Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is loosely based on a spelling bee: each episode, four comedians participate in a series of rounds, where the goal is almost always to spell words or names in rounds that are "designed to befuddle, bamboozle, and bedazzle". The winner of each episode competes again the following episode and the loser of each episode must wear a dunce cap in the Dunce's Corner.
The eight-episode first series premiered on 14 August 2024; every episode was made available on ABC iview that day. The show's second season was released in 2025, and the third in 2026.
Montgomery won a Logie Award for hosting the show in 2025.
Contents
Production
Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is co-produced by Kevin & Co. and ABC Television. This is the second Kevin & Co. production outside New Zealand, having earlier been involved in the production of Taskmaster Australia.
The first series was filmed from 26–29 June 2024 at the ABC Ultimo Centre. The cast includes Wil Anderson, Tony Armstrong, Concetta Caristo, Urzila Carlson (who also appeared in the original New Zealand version), Tom Gleeson, Peter Helliar, Geraldine Hickey, Nazeem Hussain, Demi Lardner, Zoë Coombs Marr, Luke McGregor, Tim Minchin, Rhys Nicholson and Steph Tisdell.
The first series of Guy Mont-Spelling Bee aired on BBC Three starting in February 2026.
Emma Holland and Abby Howells were hired as co-writers for season 3, as previous co-writer and co-executive producer Joseph Moore was working on Saturday Night Live UK.
Format
Each episode begins with the four contestants being introduced (with the returning champion playing on the rightmost podium) before participating in The Spelling Round and ends with The Buzz Round. In between those rounds, three other rounds and a mini-game are played with Aaron Chen acting as an assistant in these rounds.
The Spelling Round
Guests pick a word from the Coward's Cup (easy to spell words worth one point), the Person's Purse (worth two points), or the Bucket of Bravery (words deemed challenging to spell and worth three points). The guest receives the points if their spelling is correct. In season 3, a mandatory fourth option was introduced for defending champions who had won at least two previous episodes. The Flagon of Futility (almost impossible words that are worth five or negative five points for a correct or incorrect answer).
Original rounds
Aaron'd the World: Aaron spins a model globe and points at a country randomly. The guest must then spell a word relating to the country picked out.
A Decent Proposal: Guests are put into pairs. Each guest is assigned one easy word and one near impossible word to have their partner spell. If both guests spell correctly, each guest receives two points. If only one guest in the pair spells correctly, they get four points. If neither guest spells correctly, no one earns any points. (Similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma)
Battle of the Codes: Each guest is paired with an athlete. Each pair is given a word relating to their football code. The duo can then talk about the difficulty of spelling the word but not how to spell. The nominated speller will then attempt to spell the word. Correct spellers bring their duos to the next round. Duos with an incorrect speller are then "benched", eliminated from the round and are given a brief "post game interview" by the host of "Chen's Den for Sporting Men, They/Thems & Wo-men", Arron Chen.
Can You Spell What Aaron is Cooking?: Chef Aaron gives each guest a cooking demonstration (including ingredients and steps). Guests must then spell the dish being made.
Do the D.A.N.C.E.: Dancers perform a dance routine in the studio in front of the guest. The guest must then successfully identify and spell the dance's name for two full points. The guest can decide to ask for the dance's name, but they must spell its name while performing the routine (granting one point).
Drinks: Guest must spell their chosen drink.
Girt by C: Each guest must select an Australian water formation for Aaron to drink a sample of. The guest must successfully spell a certain word that was used or is related to Aaron's tasting notes of the water. Each word in this round begins and ends with the letter C.
Hometown Hero: Guests spell a word that relates to the area they came from.
Adapted rounds
Feelings: Guests must identify an item by touch and then spell it.
Homophones: Guests must spell the correct word from homophones.
Instruments: Guests hear a musical instrument and must spell it.
Social Media: Montgomery confronts guests with past social media posts, and they must recreate or rectify typos, or spell a given related word.
Spell it Better: Guests invent a new and improved spelling for an existing word chosen by Montgomery.
Spell the Audience Name: Guests choose a member of the audience to spell their full (legal) name.
Wingdings: Guests must translate a word displayed in Wingdings.
The Buzz Round
The Buzz Round refers to the fast-paced round where words based on the chosen theme are spelled in a rapid-fire manner. The guest that is in last place, or chosen by Montgomery among those tied in last place, chooses one of four categories provided by Montgomery to start the round. Once the round starts, the guest who hits the buzzer first is given an opportunity to spell the word. Each word is worth one point, but the guest is docked one point if their spelling is incorrect. Beginning in season 3, if a defending champion had won at least the previous two episodes, they were handicapped by having multiple buzzers (equal to their number of previous wins), where the active buzzer would alternate between questions.
The amount of time given in this round varies with each episode. The round and game ends once the voice of the Spelling Gods utters the words, "Stop spelling!" However, if a contestant has buzzed in as the Spelling Gods have proclaimed the end of the game, they may finish the word.
End of episode
At the end of each episode, the player with the highest score is declared the winner and is given a giant novelty ticket to appear in the next episode. In the event of a tie, a sudden-death word is given. Conversely, the guest (and in the event of a tied last place, guests) with the lowest score are gently applauded as they walk to the "Dunce's Corner" to wear the dreaded dunce cap.
Montgomery ends each episode with a recurring sign-off in which he gives himself a new name, accompanied by a humorous explanation for the name.
Episodes
Season 1 (2024)
The first season premiered on 14 August 2024, with new episodes airing each Wednesday night. All eight episodes were released at once on ABC iview. The air dates shown in the table below are for ABC TV.
Winners in bold, dunces in italics.
Season 2 (2025)
The studio elements of the second series were recorded at ABC Studio 22 in Sydney from 19 to 26 February 2025, consisting of 10 episodes and 1 Christmas special. The first episode of season 2 was shown on 4 June at 8:35 pm, with all ten standard episodes released at once on ABC iView.
Winners in bold, dunces in italics.
Season 3 (2026)
The third series was recorded at ABC Studio 22 in Sydney from 21 to 29 April 2026, consisting of 10 normal episodes and one themed special. The third season premiered on 29 April 2026, with Sam Campbell replacing Aaron Chen as the assistant.
Episodes from this season also feature episode titles, usually based on a humorous quote said during the episode. While the first seven episodes aired on ABC TV and ABC iview at the same time, the last three episodes debuted on iview on 10 June 2026, ahead of their broadcast.
Winners in bold, dunces in italics.
Reception
The premiere episode attracted an average overnight audience of 659,000 viewers nationally, winning the daily slot.
David Knox of TV Tonight gave the show three-and-a-half out of five stars.
Critic Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen of The Guardian gave it a positive review (five out of five stars), describing the show as "an absolute d-e-l-i-g-h-t".
Montgomery won the Graham Kennedy Award for Most Popular New Talent at the 2025 Logie Awards for hosting the show.