Last week, Penn Yan Middle School's spelling champ Ryan Creary represented the Wayne-Finger Lakes region at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Baltimore. Creary made it through the first three rounds of the quarter-finals Wednesday night correctly spelling "in medias res," answering the vocabulary question, "What is another word for erstwhile?" with "former," and spelling "springerle" correctly.
The word that ended Ryan's progress was "apamin," an amino acid found in bee venom. He finished in a tie for 60th place out of 200 contestants competing for the Scripps Cup and a prize of $50,000.
The 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion is Bruhat Soma of Tampa, Fla., who defeated Faizan Zaki from Texas in a spell-off.