The winner of the Rio Grande Valley Spelling Bee made it to the third round Wednesday of the Scripps National Bee.
Clarisse Tudon of Los Cuates Middle School in Los Fresnos was eliminated when she misspelled “ chrysolite ” at the competition in suburban Washington , D.C.
She told The Brownsville Herald that she spelled the word wrong, thinking it was “crystallite.”
A chrysolite is a yellowish-green gemstone. A crystallite is a speck of mineral at the beginning of crystallization.
Yet, the Valley spelling champion was not discouraged after the bell rang, eliminating her from the bee.
“I’m pretty happy with (the outcome). Even if I didn’t make the finals, I knew I was going to be OK with what the outcome was. I already made it this far. It’s already a big victory to make it to nationals,” Tudon said. “It was a lot of fun on stage. It was cool. I made a lot of friends here.”
According to the Associated Press, spellers only received the opening-round list about 50 days in advance, and 33 spellers were eliminated in the heated first round. Among the words that were misspelled: chanoyu, scarlatina, tilleul, preterition, quadrumanous and octateuch.
However, Tudon said the first round was not difficult.
“Some of the words were easy, but every once in a while there were some words that were five syllables,” Tudon said. “I think the words at the beginning were easy but got harder. They mixed it up — hard and easy words. It was basically at random.”
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