A San Diego eighth grader who won the countywide spelling bee earlier this year aced the first rounds of the national bee held just outside Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and will return for more Wednesday.
Duaa Ouznali, 13, from Bright Horizon Academy in Allied Gardens, will compete in the quarterfinals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
“It was kind of stressful, but it’s done,” Ouznali said from her hotel room Tuesday evening.
It was a long day. Ouznali’s first session began at 8 a.m. — 5 a.m. in California.
Ouznali is one of 243 spellers competing in this year’s event. There’s at least one speller from all 50 U.S. states along with others from around the world, including Canada, , Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria.
The first national spelling bee was held in 1925 — 100 years ago — but this is the 97th bee. The competition was canceled for two years during World War II and due to the pandemic in 2020.
In the preliminary rounds of the competition Tuesday morning, participants were tasked with spelling words as well as answering multiple-choice vocabulary questions. Those who made it through advanced to a written spelling and vocabulary exam.
Ouznali learned Tuesday night she had ed that and was moving on to the quarterfinals Wednesday morning, where she’ll go up against about 100 other students to define and spell more words. The semifinals will be held Wednesday evening; the finals are Thursday.
In the first round, Ouznali correctly spelled “telegnosis,” a word that refers to the “knowledge of distant happenings obtained by occult or unknown means,” according to Merriam-Webster.
In round two, she correctly defined “malfeasance,” an act of wrongdoing.
“That was one of the few words I was hoping not to get,” she said. “But when I got the options, I used the process of elimination and made some sort of an educated guess.”
Ouznali qualified for the national bee after she won the San Diego County Scripps Regional Spelling Bee in March with the word “droshky,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “any of various 2- or 4-wheeled carriages used especially in Russia.”
In the month leading up to the countywide spelling bee, Ouznali said she would study for about 15 to 20 minutes each day.
To prepare for the national competition, she added a new approach to her regimen: “I just cracked open a dictionary and read it until I got tired.”
