2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee - Singh of Louisville Advances To Finals

After 291 spellers took to the stage over the course of Wednesday morning and afternoon, the field has been whittled down to 40 finalists.  Among that group, Kentucky's Tara Singh remains in the competition to try and take home spelling's biggest (and maybe only) prize. [caption id="attachment_222482" align="alignnone" width="250"] Tara Singh[/caption] This is Tara Singh's fourth appearance at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, having previously competed in 2013, 2015 and 2016.  She took to the stage twice today, spelling both 'Miniver' (plain white fur for lining clothes) and Guamanian (relating to Guam) correctly.  She performed well enough on her written test on Tuesday to advance to become one of the top-40 spellers in Thursday's final round.  The finals will begin at 10am on ESPN2. Kentucky's two other contestants were not as lucky during today's competition.  Florence native, Tanvi Rakesh spelled her morning word (parkour) correctly, but was dinged out of the Bee after misspelling the word 'Appellation'.  Lexington's Joey Ilagan was able to spell both Nephrotoxic and Vespertine on the stage on Wednesday, but did not advance to the finals based on Tuesday's written test. Congrats to both Joey and Tanvi for making it to the big stage, that's a huge accomplishment! We will continue to keep you posted on Tara's progress through the finals tomorrow, hopefully leading to the prime-time Bee finals on ESPN at 8:30 Thursday night!  Follow @funkhouserKSR on Twitter for all the updates!