LISBON — Columbiana County 2025 Champion Speller Maureen Bone was only off by one letter when she attempted to spell “spodumene” on stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee Tuesday afternoon in Washington, D.C..

Bone, a 12-year-old seventh grader from Beaver Local Middle School, was number 172 in the national bee, so she had to wait most of the day until after 2 p.m. before taking her seat. She spelled her word spodumine, spelling it with an “i” instead of the first “e” and didn’t have the opportunity to answer a multiple choice vocabulary question.

Spellers who make it out of the first two rounds move on to the third round of the preliminaries consisting of a written test which includes both spelling and vocabulary questions. Depending on how they do, spellers could advance to the quarterfinals, which take place from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. today.

The preliminaries, quarterfinals and semifinals will be live streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com, with the semifinals live from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. today, but aired on Ion from 8 to 10 p.m. today. The finals will be aired live on Ion starting at 8 p.m. Thursday.

This was Bone’s first time at the national bee, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. She was one of 243 spellers from across the country participating in the historic bee and was sponsored by the three Columbiana County newspapers, the Morning Journal, Salem News and The Review.