The emotions were even more evident at the quarterfinals. They ranged in age from 7 to 15, with 46 of them having competed before at the national level. Most appeared nervous, tracing their words on the palm of one hand, brows furrowed and faces locked in concentration. Many of the spellers extended their time at the microphone, asking for all the information on their given word – pronunciation, derivation and use in a sentence – before they started spelling. And also politely clapping when the dreaded bell rang to signal a wrong answer, as the contestant shuffled off the stage to be met by waiting parents. In a typical year, Arizona would send a handful of students to compete in Washington in a field that can top 500 contestants.Īs crew members bustled about the cavernous ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center where the bee was held, a mostly hushed audience of parents and siblings sat and watched, politely clapping when a speller got an answer right. This year’s bee, the first in person since the pandemic, was a smaller affair than normal. “The third word I am more nervous about.” “I am definitely pretty nervous, but I am pretty confident that I can at least spell the first two, because they are on the list,” she said before Tuesday’s competition. Since winning the state competition in March, Aliyah said she has spent three hours a day with her dad, poring over the list of 4,000 words from which words for two of the first three rounds were chosen. The Scripps National Spelling Bee made a return to in-person competition this year, after virtual contests during the pandemic.
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The home-schooled 11-year-old has been working toward this point for years, competing at the state level in two previous state competitions before winning on her third try this year, when she beat out 26 other students to advance to the national bee. She admitted that she did not expect to make it, calling it her “dream to get to the finals.” “I’m so excited,” Aliyah said, after making it to the final round. She is one of just 12 finalists from the field of 229 spellers that started on Tuesday. That was just one of the correct answers over two days of competition that landed Aliyah, the only Arizona competitor at this year’s national spelling bee, in the final round Thursday. “Does this contain the Greek root ‘dys,’ meaning abnormal?” she asked the judge, before being told it did. But she admitted that she almost blew it on “dyspathy,” which she was tempted to spell with an “i.” She nailed the spelling of “nuciform” – a description of something nut-shaped – and easily defined “malinger” – to get out of work by pretending to be sick.
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WASHINGTON – Standing on stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Prescott sixth-grader Aliyah Alpert was the picture of composure. Aliyah Alpert said she has been nervous through eariy rounds of the spelling bee, but she appears composed and relaxed on stage.