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<p>WASHINGTON, D.C. &#8212; You could say, a &#8220;tyrant&#8221; of a word proved her undoing.</p><p>Times Leader speller Cassidy Crawford, 13, of Hunlock Creek, had plenty of company on Wednesday afternoon, when she forgot about the second &#8220;n&#8221; in &#8220;tyrannical&#8221; (exercising power in a cruel or arbitrary way) and became one of 71 spellers to misspell a word in Round 3 of the 90th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.</p><p>Earlier in the day, she had correctly spelled &#8220;equerry&#8221; (a person in charge of horses in a royal household) in Round 2.</p><p>&#8220;I was crying, I was so proud of her!&#8221; Cassidy&#8217;s mother, Jessica Crawford, wrote in a email. &#8220;This whole experience is amazing and, if nothing else, she will have a memory of a lifetime, thanks in large part to Times Leader and The Medicine Shoppe. The saying &#8216;it takes a village to raise a child&#8217; has never been more true. Her village now includes the Times Leader and The Medicine Shoppe and I will never be able to thank you enough.&#8221;</p><p>Throughout the day, blog entries posted on the national bee&#8217;s website allowed interested folks to follow the competition and learn, for example, that speller Rishubh Kauhal, of Sterling, Va., told pronouncer Jacques Bailly he was &#8220;mortally terrified.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t look it,&#8221; responded Bailly, a professor from the University of Vermont who won the 1980 national bee when he was a youth.</p><p>Under an entry titled &#8220;What are the odds?&#8221; the blogger reported speller 231, Christopher Serrao of Whitehouse Station, N.J., correctly spelled napoleon (a rich pastry with a name similar to a French leader). The very next word, for speller 232, Amelia Edelsberg, of Providence, R.I., was Bonapartism (a policy advocating dictatorial rule), which comes from the name of the same French leader.</p><p>The audience chuckled at the coincidence, the blogger wrote, and Amelia misspelled the word.</p><p>Then there was Speller 241, Will Rooke, of Deephaven, Minn., who immediately preceded Cassidy. He correctly spelled conceptism (a style developed by Spanish mystics of the 17th century) and celebrated by shouting &#8220;Booyah!&#8221; and &#8220;pumping his fists and jumping as he ran back to his seat.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;He wasn&#8217;t exactly the calmest person to sit by,&#8221; Cassidy&#8217;s mom, Jessica Crawford, confirmed in an email.</p><p>Although Cassidy was disappointed to leave the competition her mom reported, &#8220;she&#8217;s OK&#8221; and &#8220;Cass would like everyone to know that she had a great time, met some wonderful kids and wouldn&#8217;t trade this experience for anything.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;She knows she did her best,&#8221; Jessica Crawford wrote.</p><p>If we can be permitted to editorialize, the Times Leader adds, &#8220;Booyah!&#8221; for Cassidy.</p><p>Competition continues today June 1 with live coverage on ESPN2 at 10 a.m. and, for the final rounds, on ESPN at 8 p.m.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Times Leader champion speller Cassidy Crawford, 14, of Hunlock Creek, correctly spelled &#8216;equerry&#8217; in Round 2 of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday morning but misspelled the word &#8216;tyranically&#8217; in Round 3 on Wednesday afternoon. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/web1_readytospell-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Times Leader champion speller Cassidy Crawford, 14, of Hunlock Creek, correctly spelled &#8216;equerry&#8217; in Round 2 of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Wednesday morning but misspelled the word &#8216;tyranically&#8217; in Round 3 on Wednesday afternoon. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>

Times Leader speller falls to ‘tyrant’ of a word