Fifty bright sparks vie for national spelling bee crown

[May 30, 2019]  By Lacey Johnson

OXON HILL, Md. (Reuters) - Fifty young spellers, winnowed down from hundreds of contestants, will battle it out on the last day of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday when the champion will walk away with a $50,000 prize.

The three-day competition in Maryland started on Tuesday with a record 562 spellers aged 7 to 15. Spellers had to ace common words such as "intolerable" and "detrimental" as well as more obscure terms such as "annus mirabilis" and "hibernaculum."

By Wednesday morning, there were still 490 contestants left in the competition but that number shrank rapidly throughout the day as one after the other was eliminated. Some kids took defeat in their stride, but others left the stage wiping away tears.
 

“I bid you adieu,” said Eleanor Tallman, 14, from Flower Mound, Texas, with a smile, after misspelling "impermissible."

Spencer Phillips, 13, of McFarland, Wisconsin, let out a victory cry and punched the air after correctly spelling "zealotry". He tied for 42nd place in 2018.

Twelve-year-old Ozioma Obi delivered a strong finish with G-A-R-R-U-L-I-T-Y - a noun meaning excessive talkativeness, especially on trivial matters.

"Before you spell it is very nerve-wracking, just hearing your heart pump and hearing all the other people go before you,” said Obi.

"Then after you spell … it’s a wave of relief. You don’t have to hear that bell. It’s great,” he said.

Kolbe Berend of Austin, Texas, reacts after misspelling a word during the third round of the 92nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., May 29, 2019. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

Obi, from Greenville, North Carolina, was not going on to the final however, as his score on a preliminary written test was too low to qualify. He was not alone: Last year's second place winner Naysa Modi, 13, also failed to reach this year's finals due to her score on the preliminary test.

"The test was tough," Obi said.

The final round of the tournament in Maryland is on Thursday night and will be televised live on ESPN.

This year's bee drew spelling aces from all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories and six other countries: the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York and additional writing by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

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