Maryland competitors toppled as Scripps National Spelling Bee whittles down to 9 finalists

Maryland competitors toppled as Scripps National Spelling Bee whittles down to 9 finalists

After the second of three days of the 100th Scripps National Spelling Bee, all seven of the Maryland competitors have been knocked out of the contest as the number of spellers was whittled to nine finalists. The centennial spelling bee began Tuesday with preliminaries, in which participants have to pass two rounds — a traditional spelling round and a multiple-choice definition round — before moving on to a written test with 40 spelling and vocab…