A total of 243 kids from around the world started competing in the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee Wednesday morning. During quarterfinals Wednesday morning, 16 spellers were eliminated, and 57 advanced.
A total of 22 spellers from Texas are competing. In Round Six Wednesday morning, four Texans were eliminated; the other 18 advanced. A complete list of students and the words they spelled right or wrong can be found at https://spellingbee.com/round-results/6.
Plano's Faizan Zaki was the runner-up last year. Now in seventh grade, he spelled, "anenterous," correctly Wednesday morning.
"This is my seventh year spelling, so I'm just really hopeful," he said in an interview before the competition. "As soon as I got second last year, I don't want to be too confident, but I'm really hopeful I'll get the trophy this year."
Zaki says he started spelling bees in first grade. He says he had not studied but won the competition.
"I realized I really had a talent for this, so I just decided to pursue it," he says.
Zaki says his favorite subject is actually math. In his free time, he says he enjoys playing video games, playing the viola or solving his Rubix Cube as fast as possible. But he says most of his time focuses on preparation for the spelling bee.
"Every day when I get home from school, I just take out my dictionary, I look for words I don't recognize and then I just write them down on a Google Doc," he says. "On weekdays, I study for five to six hours and on weekends, seven to eight, so it's really intense preparation."
The semifinals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee start Wednesday at 7 p.m.; the finals are Thursday at 7.