LOS ANGELES -- Two Los Angeles County students -- including a Northridge eighth-grader -- were among the 275 spellers taking a 25-word test today as the Scripps National Spelling Bee began in National Harbor, Md.
Results will be released Wednesday. Each correct answer is worth one point.
The Los Angeles County contestants are Marika K. Fox, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at St. Nicholas School in Northridge and Tin Kuo, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Suzanne Middle School in Walnut. Competing from Orange County is Talia Rose Ruiz, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Brookhurst Junior High School in Anaheim.
The words on the test were:
- fourteen
- drowsy
- wasteland
- secrecy
- generate
- normalize
- youthquake
- unswerving
- remembrance
- electromagnetic
- appointee
- oracular
- theatricality
- benediction
- quietive
- jiggety
- infobahn
- calenture
- bonobo
- pinealectomy
- Kafkaesque
- monodomous
- vitelline
- acetarious
- hukilau
The second and third rounds will be held on stage Wednesday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, with each contestant required to spell one word in each round. Spellers earn three points for each correctly spelled word, giving each speller the chance to earn up to 31 points in the first three rounds.
At the end of the third round, the field
will be reduced to a maximum of 50 spellers based on their scores.
The semifinal and championship rounds will be held Thursday, with a contestant generally eliminated when he or she misspells a word.
Rounds two and three can be seen on the broadband network ESPN3.com beginning at 5 a.m. Wednesday. ESPN will carry the semifinal rounds beginning at 7 a.m. and the championship rounds at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
Throughout the entire competition, ESPN3.com will carry a second "play along" version, featuring the option to view the coverage without graphics, so viewers can test their knowledge against the champion spellers.
The bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below, with this year's contestants ranging in age from 8 to 15 and from third through eighth grades.
Northridge eighth-grader Marika said her favorite school subject is math, and she hopes to be a math teacher. She is a member of her school church choirs, takes flute lessons, dances, enjoys arts and crafts, camping with her Girl Scout troop and reading. Her favorite book is "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."
Tin enjoys reading and playing tennis, chess and video games. His favorite school subject is science and favorite book is "Eragon."
Talia loves music, spends much of her time playing basketball, working on her school yearbook and acting. Her favorite school subject is science.
The winner of the bee will receive $30,000 from Scripps, which owns television stations and newspapers, a $5,000 scholarship from the Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation, a $2,500 U.S. savings bond from the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster, and reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica valued at $2,600 and a lifetime membership to Britannica Online Premium and a Nook eReader and online course from K12 Inc.
The field consists of students who won locally sponsored bees in all 50 states, along with American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense Schools in Europe. Eight foreign nations are also represented -- the Bahamas, Canada, China, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Southern California has produced only one champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which began in 1925 -- Anurag Kashyap of Poway, the 2005 winner.
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