Aanya Shetty, 11, consulted her hand for a few seconds, tracing the letters along the grooves of her palm. She looked up, stepped toward the microphone and spelled out the word with a steady cadence.
"I-S-E-N-T-R-O-P-E," Aanya said. "Isentrope."
With that, the rising seventh grader John Warner Middle School cleared the preliminaries of the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
In a phone call shortly afterward, Aanya said she could feel her heart beating fast before taking the stage but composed herself onstage so she wouldn't make a mistake. It was the first time she had heard the word isentrope, but she successfully pieced it together.
She advances to Wednesday's quarterfinals, which will begin at 7 a.m. CDT.
“I’m definitely really excited, but I’m nervous for the competition," Aanya said.
Aanya was one of 234 contestants who competed in the preliminaries Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
Each faced three rounds. In the first and third, the contestant spelled a word delivered by Jacques Bailly or Brian Sietsema, the pronouncer and associate pronouncer for the bee respectively. In the second, each contestant had to choose the definition of a word from three options.
Aanya's first word was toque, a woman's small hat. After spelling it correctly, she selected the right definition for doldrums, a state of inactivity. Isentrope, her third word, is a thermodynamics term.
Contestants could request a definition, the language of origin, a sentence using the word and alternate pronunciations before attempting to spell a word. They could also verify whether a word contained a particular root — for example, the prefix sub, meaning under.
Aanya qualified to compete at the national bee in March when she spelled gypsum to win the Columbia Missourian Regional Spelling Bee. In 2021, she placed second in the regional bee. She lost to her older sister, Jiya, who got knocked out in the sixth round at Scripps. Jiya incorrectly spelled anticaries, an adjective that refers to preventing tooth decay.
Jiya, who was on the phone call with her sister, said she is proud of Aanya for advancing through the national bee at age 11. According to Bee Keeper, the bee's official magazine, about 80% of the bee's spellers are age 12 and older.
"She's a lot younger than a lot of the other competitors, so it means a lot to be competing at a younger age," Jiya said. The girls were there with their mother, Chaitra Shetty.
If Aanya advances from the quarterfinals, she will compete in the semifinals, which start at 3 p.m. CDT Wednesday. Finals will take place at 7 p.m. CDT Thursday.
