Four Minnesota kids still have a shot at winning this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The big picture: Nine local word wizzes were among the 245 students who landed in Washington, D.C., this week to compete in the buzzy competition.
State of play: Four of those Minnesotans made it through the first three rounds by nailing SAT words such as arenaceous (consisting of sand) and caprifig (a wild fig).
Caudillo (a military or political leader) and remanence (a physics term related to retaining magnetization) were among the words that tripped up local contestants, leading to their eliminations.
Zoom in: These spelling stars from our state are still standing heading into today's rounds:
Jaden Go: 7th grader at Sacred Heart School in East Grand Forks
Yupeng Chen, 8th grader at Ordean East Middle School in Duluth
William Rausch: 8th grader at Royalton Middle School in Royalton
Kai Riedner: 6th grader at Minnetonka Middle School West in Excelsior
Go deeper with all the spellers' full bios (you can search by state!) and bookmark this page to track their progress.
