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On and on it went, through "abominable" and "aurora," 'chrysalis" and "reticence," and "antennae" and "segmentate."
Joshua Nifong, the eighth- grade speller from Etna Green, won the 36-round spelling bee by first correctly spelling "palladium" and then "efficacy."
Nifong, a Triton Junior High School student, is no stranger to the winner's circle, being last year's runner-up at the county level.
Seventh grader Ashley Wireman of Warsaw, an Edgewood Middle School student, was runner-up last night and in 1997.
Their closest contender was 1997's county champion, Tyler Petty, who studies at Home School Friends. He missed "lozenge" in the 11th round.
After that, Nifong and Wireman spelled against each other for 25 rounds of one-on-one contention.
Last year's bee was won by Suraj Datta in round 18.
Seven contestants began the bee, including Jeremy Schroeder of Lakeview Middle School, Rusty Coy of Milford School, Luke Scripture of Tippecanoe Valley Middle School and Becky Phoun of Wawasee Middle School.
One dropped out with a misspelling of "malignant" in round four; another with "solace" in round five. Round six lost a student to "optician," and "napoleon" took one out in round eight.
The first two rounds of the bee, last night's junior high contest and Monday night's elementary contest, were held at First United Methodist Church in Warsaw.
The county championship will be determined between the two winners in the WRSW Radio studios tonight and broadcast live at 7 p.m.
A ruling was called into question when South Whitley Elementary School principal Bob Hoppas went over the spelling bee's rules.
He said contestants should say the words "the capital letter" before a capitalized word is spelled.
Hoppas barely finished this instruction when a parent held up a copy of the suggested rules for local spelling bees, referring to Rule 18.
Rule 18 reads: "The speller shall not be disqualified for failing to note that a word is capitalized (noted as "cap," "usu cap," "often cap," or "sometimes cap" in Webster's Third New International Dictionary and its Addenda Section, copyright 1993, Mirriam-Webster)."
On Monday night a student was disqualified for failing to say "the capital letter" before spelling "Mormon."
