Spell down

A Virginia homeschooler took 13th place in the 84th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee finals Thursday night, advancing further than any other Virginia speller in history.

Samuel George Estep, 13, was eliminated from the first round of the finals when he misspelled bondieuserie, a shoddy piece of religious artwork. Twelve other Virginia spellers made it to the national bee but were eliminated before the final round.

The week began in Washington, D.C., with 275 spellers from across the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Japan and Ghana. Each speller hoped to win the spelling trophy and over $40,000 in cash and prizes.

Eighth grader Sukanya Roy, 14, of South Abington Township, Pa., finally walked away with the trophy Thursday, after correctly spelling "cymotrichous," which relates to wavy hair. "I'm just kind of in shock," Sukanya said. "They were very hard words, but all the words I got, I just knew."

The bee is a surefire bet for suspense and overall entertainment, which is why the semifinals and finals have become staples for television. ESPN broadcasted the concluding rounds in prime time for the sixth consecutive year.

With Jeopardy uber-champion Ken Jennings and eight former winners in the house, the bee paid tribute to Frank Neuhauser and Pauline Bell, who both died in their 90s recently. Neuhauser won in 1925 with the word "gladiolus" and Bell won in 1926 with the "cerise," so bee officials placed an arrangement of cerise-colored gladioli at the base of the trophy pedestal onstage.

Then the 13 finalists entered the stage, touching the trophy along the way, took a bow and resumed competing.

Even words like "chlorthalidone," 'dreikanter," 'renminbi" and "helichrysum" couldn't sufficiently narrow down the field in the semifinals, which needed 95 minutes of overtime earlier Thursday to whittle the competitors from 41 to 13.

"There were, like, one or two words I'm glad I didn't get, but the ones that I got were fairly easy," said 14-year-old Joanna Ye of Carlisle, Pa., who was able to say that with a straight face about her words "brachygraphy," 'pinetum," 'rocaille" and "hypotrichosis."

And contestants don't stop at pursuing lofty spelling goals. Their future abitions vary from pursuing cardiovascular surgery to undertaking particle physics. Estep said he wants to be the computer scientist who designs "a working portal gun and a computer that understands English."

The bee continued to exhibit a sense of humor in the sentences used by pronouncer Jacques Bailly. He used a "set of prison bars for the name Bernie Madoff" in his example for "brachygraphy" and later referenced the "The Jeffersons," a sitcom that went off the air some 10 years before the oldest of the spellers was born.

Estep's achievement marks the first time a Virginia speller has hung in until the final round. Virginia speller David Ratcliffe placed 25th in the 1980 national bee, and Estep's sister Marissa placed 30th in 2006, the Winchester Star reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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