Kanas City: Scherzo, fantoccini and intaglio. Schadenfreude, mahout and barukhzy.
There wasn&rsquo;t a word 11-year-old Sophia Hoffman, and her 13-year-old adversary, Kush Sharma, couldn&rsquo;t nail during a Missouri county spelling bee on Saturday.
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/feb/25spellingbee.jpg" alt="" /> Spelling champs: Sophia Hoffman and Kush Sharma beat every word thrown at them
For 66 rounds, the pair dueled &mdash; until finally the judges declared they had run out of words.
&ldquo;We didn't want to just go through the dictionary and give them more words. We feared that someone would get a word that was too easy while the other would get an extremely difficult word. We wanted to be a bit more calculated and neutral, and we wanted to give each an equal opportunity,&rdquo; said Mary Olive Thompson, outreach coordinator for Kansas City Public Library.
She added, &ldquo;The officials were fatigued. The kids weren&rsquo;t tired. They had endless energy and were doing an amazing job.&rdquo;
Kush can&rsquo;t remember exactly what word was the hardest for him to spell &mdash; something French that started with an &lsquo;R.&rsquo; &ldquo;I have no idea how to pronounce it. It was a long word.&rdquo;
For Sophia, the most difficult word was schadenfreude.
The contest resumes on March 8. The winner goes to the national spelling bee in Washington in May.

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For 66 rounds, Sophia Hoffman and Kush Sharma dueled at the contest in Missouri, till the organisers ran out of words

US spelling bee hits snag, runs out of words

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US spelling bee hits snag, runs out of words

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