Poway teen eliminated from National Spelling Bee in semifinals – NBC 7 San Diego

An eighth-grade student at Twin Peaks Middle School in Poway was eliminated Wednesday in the sixth round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee when he misspelled “ravison,” an inferior canola.

Benjamin Evans was among 45 spellers out of the initial field of 245, the largest since 2019, to advance to the semifinals when he correctly answered his fifth-round multiple-choice vocabulary question earlier Wednesday: ” Is something described as sectarian? by selecting “confined to group boundaries”.

Fourteen spellers answered their fifth-round multiple-choice vocabulary question incorrectly and were eliminated.

Benjamin began Wednesday's quarterfinals by correctly spelling “torchère,” a large ornamental support for a candlestick or candelabra. There were 89 spellers eliminated in the fourth round, the first in the quarter-finals.

The 14-year-old was among 148 spellers who advanced to the quarterfinals by correctly spelling two words and answering a vocabulary question during Tuesday's preliminaries.

Benjamin began the bee by correctly spelling “Gondwana”, the large southern landmass that formed as a result of the splitting of a much larger supercontinent known as Pangea about 250 million years ago. 'years. He also chose the correct answer to the vocabulary question “What is a symposium?” » by selecting “a conference at which people give speeches”.

In the third round, Benjamin correctly spelled “lycopene,” a carotenoid pigment that is the red coloring matter in tomatoes.

There were 54 spellers eliminated in the first round, 15 in the second and 28 in the third.

The bee will end on Thursday.

Benjamin qualified for the national title by winning the San Diego County Scripps Regional Spelling Bee in March, with two-time defending champion Mihir Konkapaka finishing second.

Benjamin correctly spelled “epihippus” — an extinct genus of the modern horse family that lived in the Eocene Epoch, 38 to 46 million years ago — as the winning word.

The bee is for students in eighth grade or younger born on or after September 1, 2008. The candidates for the 96th edition of the national bee competition are aged 8 to 15 years old.

San Diego County has produced two national spelling bee champions: Anurag Kashyap in 2005 and Snigdha Nandipati in 2012.