Colorado’s 13-year-old spelling champion Aditi Muthukumar earned a spot in today’s Scripps National Spelling Bee finals by correctly spelling words this reporter had never heard of.

On Wednesday, during the bee’s quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, the Westminster teen correctly spelled or defined five words, following the three she’d nailed in the early rounds the day before.

Aditi spelled “Torquemada,” a word meaning “persecutor” stemming from the name of a monk who was part of the Spanish Inquisition. She was able to define “bellicosity,” or acting showily aggressive. And the teen spelled “taha,” a South African weaverbird with black and yellow plumage, and defined “welter,” which means to writhe and toss.

Finally, to land her spot in the finals, Aditi nailed “myrmecoxene,” which refers to an insect living in the nest of another insect that is fed and guarded for its secretion, which is used as food.

Last year, Aditi tied for 74th place in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. This year, the young contestant — who won the Denver Post-sponsored state spelling bee in March — is among eight of the best spellers in the country after Wednesday’s rounds, which eliminated 140 contestants.

The finalists will battle it out this evening for the spelling championship, with the winner receiving a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.

The structure of the Scripps Bee has undergone plenty of changes over time, but over the past three years under executive director Corrie Loeffler, the competition has gotten very hard, very fast for spellers who make it past the preliminary rounds.

Starting in the quarterfinals, the bee’s word panel can use any of the more than half a million words in Webster’s Unabridged dictionary, plus some geographical names that aren’t even listed in that volume. While the panel tries to maintain a consistent level of difficulty, it can vary from word to word.

Traditionally, the last speller standing in the finals wins, but Scripps Bee officials also can use what’s called a “spell-off” to determine the winner. That’s what happened in 2022, when 13-year-old Harini Logan beat Vikram Raju, 12, of Aurora, in the tiebreaker by correctly spelling more than 20 words.

Aditi and 11-year-old Cooper Edwards, sponsored by the Boulder Valley School District, were the two Coloradans among the 245 contestants at the annual gathering of the nation’s best spellers, which is being held outside of Washington, D.C., this week.

Cooper was bested in Tuesday’s third round by the word “butyraceous,” meaning “of or like butter.”

Aditi, an eighth-grader at Hulstrom K-8 in Northglenn, is a Jane Austen fan who spends her time writing stories, performing Indian classical dance and playing the flute when she doesn’t have her head buried in a dictionary.

To watch Aditi in the Scripps Bee finals, tune in to the ION television network from 6 to 8 p.m. Mountain time today.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.