One of two Colorado spellers competing in the advanced to Wednesday’s quarterfinals, conquering the first three rounds of the competition that drew nearly 250 of the nation’s best young wordsmiths to Washington, D.C., this week.
Nikhil Ganta, a sixth-grader at Fort Collins’ Kinard Core Knowledge Middle School, correctly spelled “boniface” — a hotel, nightclub or restaurant proprietor — in Tuesday’s first round, then aced the second round, a vocabulary test, by identifying “buffoonery” as meaning “foolish shenanigans.”
The 12-year-old, who lives in Tinmath, was one of 95 spellers to pass the written exam that served as the third round by scoring at least 13 points.
That written test, however, spelled the end of Colorado’s other contestant in the Scripps Bee.
Derek Li, a seventh-grader from Boulder’s Summit Middle Charter School, had correctly spelled sanglier — a wild boar — in the first round and, in the vocabulary round, knew that a tariff is a type of government tax.
But the 13-year-old winner of the was one of 72 spellers who didn’t make it past the third-round test.
Nikhil advanced to the national contest after winning the in March. He doesn’t have time for much buffoonery in his own life. When he isn’t browsing the dictionary, he told The Post that he enjoyed playing cricket, reading mystery novels, skiing and competing in math olympiads.
Nikhil brings a certain je ne sais quoi — his favorite word — to the competition, which is to say, a special something that is impossible to define.
The nearly century-old Scripps National Spelling Bee runs through Thursday. After a long run at a convention center in suburban Maryland, the bee returned to the nation’s capital this year at Constitution Hall, a few blocks from the White House.
This is the 98th bee; it was canceled from 1943 to 1945 because of World War II and again in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s champion will be the 111th, because the bee ended in a two-way tie several times and an eight-way tie in 2019.
Throughout Wednesday’s quarterfinals and semifinals, spellers will be eliminated at the microphone through oral spelling or vocabulary questions.
About a dozen spellers will advance to the finals. When only two remain, Scripps has the option to use a lightning-round tiebreaker known as a “spell-off” to determine the champion.
The bee is broadcast and streamed on channels and platforms owned by Scripps, a Cincinnati-based media company.
Wednesday’s quarterfinals will stream on Scripps Sports Network and from 6 to 11 a.m. Mountain Time and semifinals can be watched on those platforms from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tape-delayed semifinals will be broadcast on ION from 6 to 8 p.m. Mountain Time
Finals will be broadcast Thursday on ION from 6 to 8 p.m. Mountain Time.
The semifinals and finals will also air or be streamed on these Scripps-owned channels or services: ION Plus, Bounce, Grit, Laff, The Spot, Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More, Scripps News and Scripps Sports Network.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
