Nineteen students entered the Miller Middle School spelling bee finals held at the Black Box Theater inside the B.A. Niblock Orpheum Welcome Center on Tuesday afternoon, but only one — eighth grader Tyler Beare — emerged victorious.

The words read by moderator Lucas Johnson got progressively more difficult as the number of competitors shrank, and each of the four finalists had a chance to take home the title. Beare himself was almost knocked out when he misspelled “prognosticate,” but after the other three missed their words, he redeemed himself with the correct spelling of “suburbia.”

“I was pretty confident when I got it because when I thought of the word in my head, I just used the pronunciation,” he said.

After securing the win, Beare told the T-R he got involved with the spelling bee because it would help him get a better grade in one of his classes, and he didn’t spend much time studying for it.

“I think we spelled six words together. I gave him several. I gave him ‘candor,'” his mother Jennie said.

Tyler added that “precipice” and “prognosticate” were the two most difficult words he had to spell on the day, though he was successful spelling the former. Now that he’s headed to the regional level of competition at Living History Farms in Urbandale on March 7 at 2 p.m., he plans to spend some more time preparing and hopefully remembering adages such as “i before e, except after c.” The winner of the state competition moves on to the National Bee in Washington, D.C. on May 28-29.

Seventh grader Daniel Goslinga is the first alternate, and fellow seventh grader Pway Kham is the second alternate. The Miller Spelling Bee is affiliated with the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and Tuesday was the first time it had been held at the Orpheum and the first iteration of the Bee since before the COVID-19 pandemic.