All three Nebraska spellers at the Scripps National Spelling Bee were eliminated on Wednesday as the 562 entrants were narrowed to 50.
But for Payton Smidt of DeWitt, there was satisfaction in spelling her Round 3 word -- necrotype -- correctly.
"Honestly, I'd never even heard the word before," Payton said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening. "So I just tried to use what I knew about the word roots, and it worked."
Necrotype is an extinct organism or group of organisms.
The national spelling bee uses preliminary written tests to narrow the remaining spellers to 50 after the second and third rounds of live competition in a Washington, D.C., suburb. That's what eliminated Payton. Nearly 400 competitors correctly spelled their Round 3 words, including Payton, the Midwest Spelling Bee winner.
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 "The written test was so hard. I would say I didn't know 90 percent of the words," said Payton, a seventh-grader.
"I'm pretty OK with not winning, though. It was amazing to be with people who have the same desire for spelling that I do."
Omaha's Siri Doddapaneni and Immanuel Soh were also eliminated from the competition on Wednesday. Siri spelled provost, which is a title used for a senior administrative office in certain colleges and universities, to stay alive in the third round, but fell short of the finals because of her preliminary test score. Immanuel misspelled yuzu, which is the name of a round, yellowish citrus fruit, and was eliminated in the third round.
The finals of the spelling bee will air live on ESPN at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
Nebraska's last national winner was Jennifer Reinke of Deshler in 1967.