A seventh grader at The Mirman School in Bel Air will attempt Thursday to become the first speller from Los Angeles County to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Oliver Halkett advanced to the finals in National Harbor, Maryland by correctly spelling five words and providing the right answers for two vocabulary questions during Wednesday’s quarterfinals and semifinals, including gobbe — a groundnut from the tropical African Bambarra herb — in the day’s final round.
The 13-year-old began Wednesday’s quarterfinals at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center by correctly spelling polymorphism, the quality or state of existing in or assuming different forms, then chose the right answer for the vocabulary question, “If something is done gingerly, it is done?” selecting, “with extreme care.”
Oliver completed the quarterfinals by correctly spelling opihi, any of several edible a marine gastropod mollusks.
The three quarterfinal rounds reduced the field from 99 to 57.
Oliver began the evening semifinal session by correctly spelling mashlum, a crop consisting of a mixture of a cereal and a legume. There were 17 spellers eliminated in the round.
Oliver gave the correct answer for the vocabulary question, “What is a juggernaut?” “a massive, crushing force.” Five spellers missed their vocabulary questions, cutting the field to 35.
The second question in each of the bee’s four segments — preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and finals — is a multiple-choice vocabulary question.
Oliver then spelled aeolight, a gas-discharge glow lamp which is used in optical sound recording, to be among 19 spellers to advance to the 10th round.
Oliver will be among nine spellers competing in the finals which are set to begin at 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on ION, whose Los Angeles-area owned-and-operated station is KPXN-TV Channel 30.
Oliver is competing in the national bee for the second consecutive year. He reached the fourth round and was among 89 spellers tying for 60th in 2024.
Oliver began Tuesday’s preliminaries by correctly spelling becquerel — a unit of radioactivity of a given sample of material equal to one atomic decay. His vocabulary question was “Something described as toilsome is” and he chose, “characterized by tiring work.”
Oliver was among 99 spellers advancing 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 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.
The bee began with a field of 243 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.
Oliver qualified for the national bee by winning the Los Angeles County Regional Spelling Bee in April, correctly spelling diazepam, a drug sold under the brand name Valium, to end the 16-round competition.
Oliver’s favorite activities include playing piano, learning Mandarin and Latin, playing soccer and reading and particularly likes to learn about current events and history, according to biographical information supplied by bee organizers.
Oliver’s favorite movies are “Gladiator” and “A Beautiful Mind,” and one of his favorite television shows is “The West Wing.” He hopes to become a governmental official, ideally Secretary of State.
The bee’s other contestant from Los Angeles County, Kamya Balaji, failed to score high enough on the written test to qualify for the quarterfinals. The sixth grader at Notre Dame Academy in Rancho Park was among 84 spellers tying for 100th.
Kamya qualified for the national bee by finishing second in the Los Angeles County bee.
The lone speller from Orange County, Sydney Tran, also failed to score high enough on the written test to qualify for the quarterfinals. The seventh grader at El Rancho Charter School in Anaheim was also among 84 spellers tying for 100th.
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 winner will receive $50,000 from the Scripps National Spelling Bee, $2,500 and a reference library from the dictionary publisher 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 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, most recently Rishik Gandhasri of San Francisco, one of eight co-champions in 2019.