Two Bay Area middle-schoolers remained in competition Wednesday after four rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
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Aren Lee, 13, an eighth-grader at King’s Academy in Sunnyvale, and Aiden Meng, 12, a sixth-grader at Orinda Intermediate, both passed the written spelling and vocabulary test on Tuesday afternoon and correctly spelled their round-4 words — hastate for Aren, viaduct for Aiden.
The competition, in Oxon Hill, Md., began Tuesday morning with a round of spelling and then of definition for the 243 spellers, ages 8 to 14.
A third Bay Area speller — Rithvi Balajee, 12, a seventh-grader at Stratford School in Pleasanton — was one of the 99 advancing from the written test, but she was eliminated on her fourth-round word, gibbon.
In Wednesday’s quarterfinals and semifinals, spellers will be eliminated at the microphone through spelling or vocabulary questions. About a dozen will advance to Thursday’s finals, and the winner gets prizes including $52,500 in cash.
The action is streamed live on multiple platforms:
— Wednesday, May 28: Quarterfinals streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com from 5 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. Pacific time. Semifinals streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Semifinals broadcast on ION on tape delay from 5 to 7 p.m.
— Thursday, May 29: Finals broadcast on ION from 5 to 7 p.m.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
