Dakota and the Bee, Part One

Two-time Nevada spelling bee champion Dakota Jones took the stage at this morning’s Scripps National Spelling Bee and smiled as he correctly spelled “garibaldi” in the hopes of reaching the semifinal round of this year’s contest.

Jones, 14, an eighth-grader at Hyde Park Middle School in Las Vegas, took his time to consider the spelling of the Italian-based word for a particular style of blouse. He asked, first, for the definition, then the word origin and for it to be used in a sentence.

Dakota will get another word to spell this afternoon. He then will learn shortly afterward whether he will advance to the semifinals, which will be Thursday and broadcast in the morning on ESPN.

The way the bee works, spellers were given a 50-word written test yesterday, and then get to spell two words during today's preliminary rounds. Judges will combine the written and oral scores to determine no more than 50 semifinalists.

The written scores won’t be revealed until later today. Jones missed two words on the written portion last year when he competed as a seventh-grader and made it to the semifinals. He thinks he may have done better this time.

“I think I did pretty well,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “There was one word, monodomous, it means having only one nest, like in an ant colony.”

Jones, who is a Boy Scout, plays viola and piano and is strong in math, is one of 275 contestants in the 84th bee. The contest is being held this year at National Harbor, Md.

Jones, who spends about 90 minutes a day studying spelling, hopes to reach the finals that will be broadcast tomorrow evening on ABC. He slipped last year in the semifinals, where a single misspelling can knock you out of the contest.