Iowa’s contestants remain in the running at the national spelling bee. Nebraska’s contestant is an Iowa boy whose two older sisters each have competed in the spelling contests in years past. 13-year-old Benjamin Thomas Reiner goes to a private school in Harlan and qualified for the nationals competing in the regional spelling bee sponsored by the Omaha paper. Kim Meyer of Scales Mound, Illinois, is an Iowa contestant who qualified in the Dubuque newspaper’s regional spelling bee and the Des Moines newspaper candidate, Isaac Kurth, attends Harding Middle School in Cedar Rapids. All have passed both rounds so far of competition, spelling souvenir, heifer, chiropractor, syncope, Rorschach, and chaetophorous (ki-TOFF-ariss) ..and words that just keep on getting harder. Today (Thursday) the cable sports channel ESPN will televise final rounds of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.
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