NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Kids like pirates. But they typically don’t know them by the name “picaroon.” That’s the word that Arlington’s Jacob Williams was asked to spell in the third round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee Wednesday. Unfortunately, he replaced the double-o with a “u.”
“I was trying to think of it more as a Spanish word than an English word that had come from Spanish,” Jacob said. Because there usually aren’t double letters in Spanish, other than “l,” he went with a “u,” for the penultimate letter.
“I had never heard [the word] before,” he said. “It was just a guess.”
The “ultra-competitive” 14-year-old from Grace Preparatory Academy was making his first appearance on the national stage. It was daunting, and he had a hard time concentrating at first, he said. But by the third round he was focused.
Williams practices writing against his identifying card to help him work out the way a word is spelled. (Nick Zazulia/MNS)
Before an audience of hundreds at a hotel in suburban Washington, Jacob was tasked with spelling “aciniform.” He took only a small portion of his two allotted minutes before reciting the correct letters proper order and returning stoically to his seat. Despite the nerves, he said he was confident about that word.
Jacob remembers all the words he’s lost on in past bees – empanadas and dungarees, for instance — so he’s not likely to forget picaroon. Still, he said it won’t take him too long to get over the disappointment.
“I know I tried as hard as I could to spell,” Jacob said. “Once you’re up there, it’s not something you can really push at. It’s just if you can remember, and how much you have left.”
After the third round, the remaining spellers had their scores added to the results from a written preliminary test that was taken on Tuesday. Forty-five of the original 285 spellers remain for Thursday’s finals.
Starting at 10 a.m. EST on ESPN2 and ESPN at 8 p.m. on ESPN, those finalists will compete for a $40,000 cash prize, the Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy and trip to New York to appear on “LIVE with Kelly.”
Jacob said that he still wants to watch the finals Thursday even though he won’t be competing.
And he has a prediction, too.
“That Max Meyer kid [from St. Paul, Minnesota] seemed like he had a pretty good chance,” Jacob said. Though he’s rooting for anyone from Texas, of course.
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