LA County Student Competing In National Spelling Bee Semifinals: How To Watch

CALIFORNIA — A Los Angeles County student has advanced to the semifinals of the 100th anniversary Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Oliver Halkett, a 7th grader at The Mirman School in Brentwood, spelled a word in the first round and correctly answered a vocabulary question in the second. The SoCal speller then took a written test, earning him a place in the semifinals Wednesday night.

The semifinal round airs from 5-7 p.m. PT Wednesday and the final round airs from 5-7 p.m. Thursday on the ION network, which is owned by Scripps.

Under bee rules, spellers will be grouped by their number of correct answers. The number of spellers to advance will be determined by identifying the group whose minimum score results in as close to 100 quarterfinalists as possible.

Oliver spelled becquerel — a unit of radioactivity of a given sample of material equal to one atomic decay. His vocabulary question was "Something described as toilsome is" and he chose, "characterized by tiring work."

Oliver is competing in the national bee for the second consecutive year. He reached the fourth round and was among 89 spellers tying for 60th in 2024.

Another LA County student, Kamya Balaji — a 6th grader at Notre Dame Academy in Rancho Park — was eliminated before Wednesday's round.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is an end-of-the-school-year tradition that began in 1925, when nine newspapers held spelling bees and the winners squared off for the spelling title. Since then, millions of spellers have participated in the bee, which is held just outside the nation’s capital, at a convention center on the banks of the Potomac River.

Although the bee itself is 100 years old, this is the 97th national spelling competition. It was paused 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 110th, because the bee ended in a two-way tie several times and an eight-way tie in 2019.

The participants, all under the age of 15, must not have passed beyond the eighth grade. To make it to the quarterfinals in Maryland, the 243 spellers prevailed first in local spelling bees.

At least one speller from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia qualified for the bee, along with students from U.S. territories Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands; and from Canada, the Bahamas, Germany, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria.

Sixty spellers were eliminated in Tuesday's preliminary spelling and vocabulary rounds, leaving 183 to take a written spelling and vocabulary test ahead of Wednesday's quarterfinals. Another 84 were eliminated by the test, leaving 99 quarter finalists on the stage Wednesday morning.

The Associated Press and City News Service contributed reporting.