Monterey County spelling bee proves kids are smarter than adults.

How many people can tell you what pochismo is? And how many among them can spell it?

Seventh grade homeschooler Paul Hamrick survived 56 other students and 17 rounds of an epic Monterey Countywide Spelling Bee March 5 at Hartnell College in part by doing exactly that.

Along the way he pinned down words like reparations, hypercritical, baration, maraud, penchant, commission, invasive, renown, Baedeker, taiga, zephyr, heifer, Bolshevik, potash, pretzel and complaints.

Wait, potash? What the heifer is potash? (Apparently it's potassium carbonate especially from wood ashes.)

It's an impressive list of words—I mean, Baedeker and taiga?—and an accomplishment made that much more hardcore by the fact he defeated a three-time school champ eighth grader who had a handle on slippery words like apparatchik, euphemism and malihini.

Perhaps most impressively, he spelled pochismo, which Merriam-Webster defines as "a term of U.S. origin borrowed into Mexican Spanish and used along the border between the U.S. and Mexico especially by U.S.-born Mexicans."

The official press release from the Monterey County Office of Education misspelled it.

Here's more from their report, including at least a dozen more words most adults could never spell.

As champion, Paul will represent Monterey County at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in the Washington, D.C. area May 28–June 4, 2017.

Airfare, hotel and expenses for Paul and a parent are sponsored by community partners. Other prizes included the Merriam Webster Third New International Dictionary and champion trophy.

The order of finishers is as follows:

Second place went to three-time school champion, Anthony Santa Ana, an 8th grader from Washington Middle School.

Anthony correctly spelled syllabus, pylon, truism, multiverse, thistle, apparatchik, euphemism, raita, basmati, malihini, mattock, expertise and digestive. 

Third place went to Heidi Hansch, an 8th grader at All Saints’ Episcopal Day School, who correctly spelled surrealist, adequacy, summitry, redact, beacon, halal, dossier, serdab, commissar, lieutenant, streusel, shogun, finale, and nonsense. 

Other top finishers appear here:

Fourth Place

James Beck, 7th grade, Monterey County Home Charter School

Fifth Place

Garrett Fernandez, 8th grade, Junipero Serra School

Tied for Sixth Place

Alison Eng, 8th grade, Pacific Grove Middle School

Osvaldo Garcia, 8th grade, Chualar Union Elementary School

Eighth Place

Kevin Martinez, 8th grade, Palma School

Ninth Place

Colin Hunt, 7th grade, Santa Catalina School

Tenth Place

Mia Sanchez, 7th grade, El Sausal Middle School