BANGOR – An 11-year-old Androscoggin County boy won the Maine Spelling Bee on Saturday by correctly spelling the words “wasabi” and “melancholy.”

Klaas Pruiksma, a sixth-grader at Montello School in Lewiston, will advance to the 80th annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, which will be held from May 28 to June 1 in nation’s capital.

“I’ve been to Washington, D.C., before,” Pruiksma said after the bee, which was held at Eastern Maine Community College. “But I want to see more stuff this time. I hope we get tickets for things.”

“If my parents go, then we’ll probably bring my little sister too,” he added.

The bee, sponsored by the Bangor Daily News’ Newspaper in Education program and by EMCC, started with a practice round.

Three spellers went down in the first official round. “Ramen,” which are quick-cooking egg noodles usually served in a broth, was one of the unlucky words.

An appeal of an elimination went up in the ninth round. Under the rules, the spellers’ parents and teachers were allowed to appeal a pupil’s elimination by turning in a yellow slip with the speller’s name, the word spelled incorrectly, and the reason they thought the child should be reinstated.

The six remaining spellers waited patiently as the judges conferred and finally rejected the appeal.

“Regatta” and “colloquial” were responsible for two out of the three casualties in the round, leaving only three spellers for the 10th.

“Kahuna,” which means a master of Hawaiian religious lore and ceremony, was spelled correctly, but “graffiti” eliminated Oxford County’s Lauren Brookings, 13, of Molly Ockett Middle School in Fryeburg from the competition.

Then there were two.

Pruiksma and Knox County champion Molly Allen White, 13, of Camden Rockport Middle School went three rounds, successfully spelling words such as “obsequious,” “philanthropy” and “teriyaki.”

“My brother was quizzing me on my words on the way here,” White said. “‘Teriyaki’ was one of the words. If he hadn’t asked me, I probably wouldn’t have spelled it right in the bee.”

“Autobahn,” the German highway, tripped up White in the 13th round. Then Pruiksma spelled “wasabi” – an Asian herb whose greenish root is grated like horseradish and eaten with fish and other food – and “melancholy” correctly to win the title of top speller in the state.

“I looked at last year’s list, this year’s list and I started on the national list, but there’s 7,000 words on it, so I didn’t get through it,” Pruiksma said afterward of his study habits for the bee.

Besides the all-expenses-paid trip for two to the national spelling bee, Pruiksma also received an unabridged dictionary, a free one-year subscription to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Web site, and the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, a $100 Series EE U.S. Savings Bond.

Maine’s first lady, Karen Baldacci, addressed the county champions and the audience before the bee started.

“Know the meanings of the words, ask what the language of origin is,” she advised the spellers. “It’s one thing to memorize the words, but associating the word with something helps.”

She also encouraged the winner of the bee to contact Maine’s congressional delegation to arrange a tour of the Capitol while in Washington for the national competition.