Spelling bee favorite knocked out in semifinals; champion to be crowned Friday night

Spelling bee favorite knocked out in semifinals

WASHINGTON — Tim Ruiter studied some 20,000 note cards to prepare for the National Spelling Bee, only to be stumped by a skirt worn by men in the Balkans.

The 13-year-old from Centreville, Va. — and the runner-up at last year’s bee — was eliminated in the first round of the semifinals Friday morning when he misspelled “fustanella.”

“I’m feeling all right,” Tim said after two long hugs from his mother outside the ballroom where the competition is held. “I don’t have to work any more. I don’t have to worry about anything tonight.”

Forty-eight spellers began the day with the hope of being among the dozen or so to advance to the finals Friday night. Tim was one of 16 spellers who failed to get past the first semifinal round, a result so surprising that the other spellers and much of the audience gave him a standing ovation as he walked off the stage.

Another upset seemed to occur in the next round, when four-time bee competitor Neetu Chandak was ousted by the word “paravane” — a torpedo-shaped underwater protective device. The 14-year-old from Seneca Falls, N.Y., who finished eighth last year, was in tears after she left the ballroom. But she was recalled to the stage and reinstated after the judges decided that she had received an ambiguous answer to her question about the word’s origins.

The other returning finalist had little trouble with her semifinal words. Anamika Veeramani, 14, of North Royalton, Ohio, rattled off the letters to “osteomyelitis” and “mirin” to remain in contention.

The word Tim was given was a doozy. Its roots went from Latin to Italian to Greek to Italian to English. He wasn’t sure if it was one that he had printed on his mammoth stash of note cards back home. He misspelled it “fustinella.”

“The Greeks must have messed it up,” he said.

Like the other favorites, Tim knew all along that one bad word could derail his chances at the winner’s trophy and the prizes that go along with it. Mother Vicki noted that, going into this year’s competition, he had already achieved the perfect conversation opener for the rest of his life: “I finished second at the National Spelling Bee.”

“He’s had an experience most people never have,” Vicki Ruiter said.

The week began with 273 spellers from across the U.S. and countries as distant as Ghana and New Zealand. They were reduced to 48 through a written test Wednesday and two oral rounds Thursday.

The bee continued to display its newfound funny bone. Only at a spelling bee could one hear sentences like these: “Lauren gently informed her father that the exploding fist bump had fallen out of consuetude” and “The phillumenist had a hard time obtaining fire insurance on his storage unit.”

A consuetude is an established custom, while a phillumenist is a matchbook collector.

Sonia Schlesinger, who represented Washington, D.C., last year but now lives in Tokyo, celebrated her 14th birthday by spelling the legal term “muniments.” The next time at the mic, she asked for a “gift” word for her birthday. When she was given “lorimer,” she asked: “Could I have a different one please?”

“I don’t think you’d like the next one any better,” said the bee’s word pronouncer, Jacques Bailly.

Sonia misspelled the word and was eliminated.

Staying alive was the only speller from Canada, which didn’t send its usual large contingent this year because of cutbacks stemming from the recession. Laura Newcombe, 11, of Toronto, spelled her words correctly in the first two semifinal rounds.