A 13-year-old from Corona was eliminated in the seventh round of the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee Wednesday, misspelling piligan, a club moss of the genus Lycopodium of Brazil and Argentina with cathartic properties.
Lara Randhawa was among 10 spellers tying for 13th in the field of 234. Of the 22 spellers who entered the seventh round at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, 12 correctly spelled their words to advance to Thursday’s finals
This was Lara’s final bee because it is limited to students in eighth grade or below. She finished in a 16-way tie for 43rd in the 2021 bee when she was eliminated in the fifth round.
Lara correctly spelled profonde, a special pocket in the tail of a magician’s coat, in the fourth round Wednesday morning to be among the 48 spellers to advance to the semifinals Wednesday afternoon. There were 40 spellers eliminated in the fourth round.
The eighth grader at Auburndale Intermediate School in Corona correctly spelled lanuginous, an adjective meaning covered with down or fine soft hair, in the fifth round when 17 of the 48 spellers misspelled their words.
All 31 spellers in the sixth round were given a word meaning question. The second round of each level of the competition — the preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and finals — is a word meaning round, requiring the speller to orally select the correct multiple-choice answer to a vocabulary question read by the pronouncer.
The word meaning questions were added to the bee in 2021 in an attempt to challenge the spellers and further advance the bee’s focus on word knowledge and literacy.
Lara’s question was “A riposte is:” and she correctly chose, “a retort or retaliatory remark.”
Nine of the spellers answered their sixth-round word meaning question incorrectly.
Lara’s stay in the 2021 national bee ended when she gave an incorrect answer to the word meaning question in the quarterfinals, “What does a trousseau consist of?” The correct choice was clothes and other belongings of a bride.
All the spellers eliminated in the semifinals received a $500 gift card and commemorative medal.
No speller from Riverside County has won the national bee.