Bluffton eighth grader Elizabeth Nisly for the second year in a row has won the Allen County Spelling Bee.

To advance to the county bee Nisly won the Bluffton Middle School spelling bee as a seventh grader and as an eighth grader.

Nisly now advances to the regional spelling bee at 10 a.m., Saturday, March 17 at Rhodes State College. The bee is in the Martha Farmer Auditorium.

Bluffton's spelling bee representative won the county event after 17 rounds.

Words given her and spelled correctly were zero, yield, frolic, shogun, paradox, obstinate, suave, homonym, plateau, calypso, refugee, hibachi, autopsy, analysis, machismo, dyslexia, mediocre (winning word).

Her study for the original middle school bee, involved reviewing 800 words of increasing difficulty from elementary level through 8th grade level words.

Study for the county bee involved mastery of 14 lists totaling 1,006 words of various languages of origin. Origins represented Latin, Arabic, French, Japanese, German, Slavic, Dutch, Old English, Native American/New World, Greek, Italian and Spanish.

Nisly is the daughter of Lamar and Deborah Nisly of Bluffton.