All three spellers from Los Angeles County advanced to the third round of Scripps National Spelling Bee today at Constitution Hall in Washington, while the lone entrant from Orange County was eliminated in the second round.
Oliver Halkett, who tied for seventh in last year’s bee, correctly spelled astilbe in the first round and provided the correct response to the second-round vocabulary question, “What is the main ingredient in ganache?” selecting chocolate.
Astilbe is a noun meaning any of a genus of chiefly Asian perennials of the saxifrage family that have simple or usually compound leaves and are widely cultivated for their panicles of usually white, pink, or red flowers.
Oliver qualified for the bee by winning the Los Angeles County Regional Spelling Bee for the third consecutive year. He is an eighth-grader at Mirman School in Brentwood.
Olive O’Brien correctly spelled sturnine, an adjective meaning of, relating to or resembling a starling. She selected the correct answer to her vocabulary question, “To erode is to?” selecting “wear away by the action of water, wind, or ice.”
Olive is a 14-year-old eighth-grader at WISH Community School, a free public, independent, non-profit charter school in Westchester. She qualified for the national bee by finishing second behind Oliver in the county bee.
Elyssa Chen spelled wahine, a Polynesian woman, in the first round, and gave the correct answer to her second-round vocabulary question, “What does stupefy mean?” answering, “to astound or stun.”
Elyssa is an 11-year-old fifth-grader at Center Street Elementary School in El Segundo. She qualified for the national bee as the third-place finisher in the county bee.
Sydney Tran was eliminated when she incorrectly answered her vocabulary question, “Something described as jejune is?” selecting irritating instead of the correct answer, immature.
The 14-year-old eighth-grader at El Rancho Charter School in Anaheim correctly spelled her first-round word, Hangul, the alphabetic script in which Korean is written. She qualified for the national bee with her second consecutive victory in the Orange County Bee.
Oliver, Olive and Elyssa will join the other spellers who advanced to the third round in taking a written test at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The scores from the written test will determine who will advance to Wednesday’s quarterfinals.
Under bee rules, spellers will be grouped by their number of correct answers. The number of spellers to advance will be determined by identifying the group whose minimum score results in as close to 100 quarterfinalists as possible.
The bee began with a field of 247 spellers from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, The Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates and a Department of Defense School in Germany.
The bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below and who were born on Sept. 1, 2011 or later.
The bee will conclude Thursday. The winner will receive $50,000 from the Scripps National Spelling Bee, $2,500 and a reference library from Encyclopaedia Britannica, $400 in reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica, including a 1768 Encyclopaedia Britannica replica set and a three-year membership to Britannica Online Premium, two-day admission for up to four people, a two-night hotel stay, astronaut meet & greet, and $350 in merchandise from the from Kennedy Space Center & Visitors Complex and $1,000 in flight credits from Delta Air Lines.
This is the first time the bee has been held in Washington since 2010. It was held there from its inception in 1925 through 2010. It was held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, in National Harbor, Maryland from 2011 through 2025, except for 2020 when it was not held because of the coronavirus pandemic and 2021 when it was held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort, near Orlando, Florida.
Tuesday’s preliminaries will be streamed on Scripps Sports Network through noon Pacific Daylight Time. Wednesday’s quarterfinals will be streamed on Scripps Sports Network from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. and the semifinals from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The semifinals will be replayed on ION from 5 to 7 p.m.
Thursday’s finals will air live on ION from 5 to 7 p.m.
No speller from Los Angeles or Orange counties has won the bee.