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Vindicator speller falls in semifinals
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Max Lee of Canfield competes in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
By Denise Dick
Washington, D.C.
Antioxidants are supposed to be good for you, but one of them proved troublesome for The Vindicator’s representative in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Max Lee, 12, a seventh-grader at Canfield Village Middle School, misspelled resveratrol, an antioxidant believed to have health benefits, to be eliminated Thursday during the fifth round of the competition.
Max, the son of Dr. Tac and Linglan Liu Lee, was one of 41 spellers to advance to the semifinals, down from 278 who started the competition. Only 21 contestants advanced to the competition’s final rounds.
Max was a little disappointed with not making it to the finals but said he enjoyed the experience overall. “Being on stage” was his favorite part, he said.
One tricky part about the word he missed was that it doesn’t have an origin.
Contestants are permitted to ask the spelling-bee pronouncer for a word’s origin, definition and alternate pronunciations as well as asking that the word be used in a sentence.
“He had a word that was very difficult,” Mrs. Lee said.
Max, who won The Vindicator Regional Spelling Bee last March to earn the national competition berth, correctly spelled “enthymeme” in the first round of the semifinals.
It’s defined by Dictionary.com as “a syllogism or other argument in which a premise or the conclusion is unexpressed.”
Preliminary competition earlier this week included a computer test and two rounds that totaled 31 points maximum. Max earned 25 points, correctly spelling “gauche,” which means lacking social grace, and “jnana,” or knowledge acquired through meditation, the website says.
The Vindicator is an underwriter of Max’s trip to Washington, which includes sightseeing for contestants.
Max and his family planned to watch the final rounds of the bee and to return home this weekend.