Victoria Li and a Great Showing at the National Spelling Bee
EASTVALE (CNS) – A sixth-grader at Philistine Rondo School of Discovery in Eastvale was eliminated in the sixth round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee Wednesday in National Harbor, Maryland when she misspelled ablegate.
Victoria Li gave the fourth letter of the noun meaning a papal envoy on a special mission as an “i” instead of an “e.”
The 11-year-old was among 16 spellers eliminated in the sixth round as the field was reduced to 57.
Victoria was among the 16 spellers tying for 58th. She and all the other quarterfinalists receive a $100 gift card and a commemorative pin from the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
All the spellers receive a prize package, including bee souvenirs and an official certificate of participation from the dictionary publisher Merriam- Webster; a one-year subscription to Merriam- Webster Unabridged Online; a 2025 U.S. Mint proof set; and a one-year subscription to Britannica Online Premium News-O-Matic.
Victoria began Wednesday’s competition at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center by correctly spelling protreptic, a noun meaning an utterance (such as a speech) designed to instruct and persuade.
In the fifth round, Victoria chose the correct answer to the vocabulary question, “What does it mean to gesticulate?” which was “to move the body or limbs when talking.”
The second question in each of the four segments of the bee — preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and finals — is a multiple-choice vocabulary question.
Victoria was among 99 spellers from the original field of 243 to advance to the quarterfinals after scoring high enough on the third-round written test administered to contestants who had correctly spelled their first- round word correctly and provided the correct answer to the second-round vocabulary question.
The scores of the written test were not released. Those who scored at least 13 on the test advanced to the quarterfinals, bee organizers said. The maximum score was 35.
Under bee rules, spellers were grouped by their number of correct answers. The number of spellers of advancing was determined by identifying the group whose minimum score resulted in as close to 100 quarterfinalists as possible.
The field was 165 entering the written test.
In Tuesday’s first round, Victoria correctly spelled morion — a high- crested helmet with no visor. In the second round, she was asked the vocabulary question, “What is cadence?” and correctly selected “vocal rhythm.”
Victoria qualified for the national bee by winning by the 47th annual Riverside County Spelling Bee in March, correctly spelling tersanctus, a hymn or invocation praising God as the thrice-holy deity, to end the nearly four- hour, 23-round competition.
Victoria’s school describes itself as a four-track year-round magnet elementary school with a science, technology, engineering, arts and math instructional framework on all tracks and a Mandarin immersion program on track D.
It is named for the first woman and Black superintendent of the Corona- Norco Unified School District.
The bee began with spellers from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Department of Defense schools and five nations outside the United States — the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria.
There were 42 spellers eliminated in the first round and 18 in the second.
The bee is limited to students who have not have passed beyond the eighth grade or an international equivalent on or before Aug. 31, 2024 and who were born on Sept. 1, 2009 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 Merriam- Webster, $400 in reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica including a 1768 Encyclopedia Britannica replica set and a three-year membership to Britannica Online Premium.
This is the 100th anniversary of the first national spelling bee, which was held on June 17, 1925, when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers around the country to hold spelling bees and send their champions to Washington, D.C.
This is the 97th edition of the bee. There were no bees in 1943, 1944 and 1945 because of World War II and in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Six Californians have won the national bee but none was from Riverside County.
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