Isabel Messina, speller 178 and a Maryland eighth grader. misspelled "suzerain," a dominant state exercising varying degrees of control over a vassal state with regard to its foreign relations but allowing it sovereign authority in its internal affairs.
Arik Karim, speller 179, seemed confident when he went o the microphone. "I am doing O-K," he told Dr. Bailly, giving him the symbol with his hand. "I was expecting this word."
His word was "massasauga," a small rattlesnake widely distributed from New York across Texas into Mexico that feeds on mice and amphibians.
But Arik, a Florida sixth grader, misspelled. Still, he left the stage with class.
"Good luck to all of the remaining spellers," he said, after the applause for him died down.
And Olivia Schwab, speller 182, and an Illinois sixth grader, has also been eliminated. She misspelled sessile, which means permanently attached : not free to move about.