SAN DIEGO -- A bid for spelling glory ended Thursday for a Carmel Valley seventh-grader competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Thirteen-year-old Justin Song stumbled on the word Belial, which means worthlessness or wickedness, often personified in the Old Testament. Earlier in the day, Justin made it through the fifth round of the competition in Washington, D.C., correctly spelling diastrophe, which means a deformation of Earth's crust.

Evan O'Dorney, a 13-year-old from Danville was declared the winner. Evan aced "serrefine" -- a noun describing small forceps -- Thursday night to become the last youngster standing. He won a tense duel with Nate Gartke of Spruce Grove, Alberta, who was trying to become the first Canadian to win the bee, in its 80th year.

Justin had advanced to Thursday's televised rounds by passing a 25-word written test, then advancing through the competition by correctly spelling the words hoodlum, cytochrome and rissole.

He competed last year, but was eliminated early. Justin qualified for a return trip to the national event by winning the San Diego County Bee in March. He prepared for the national bee by poring over books of complex words and their definitions, and archives of word lists used at previous spelling bees, according to his mother, Rebecca Song.

"Spelling has always been easy for him," she said in a telephone interview from Washington. "He's a good reader."

Justin has been reading books since kindergarten. In first grade, he finished second in his school's spelling bee, and won it the next year, his mother said.

"Since then, he knows spelling," Rebecca Song said.

Besides reading, Justin also enjoys soccer and plays the violin in the San Diego Youth Symphony, his mother said.

Justin's parents emigrated to Southern California from Taiwan 20 years ago. They grew up reading with Chinese characters, a language that does not have a phonetic alphabet. They associate a symbol with sound, relying on similar photographic memory skills employed by spellers.

This year's national bee began with a record 286 contestants, 11 more than the previous record set last year. It is limited to students in eighth grade or below. In addition to the United States, the field included 10- to 15-year-olds from American Samoa, the Bahamas, Canada, Europe, Guam, Jamaica, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The winner will receive $20,000, plus two $5,000 cash awards from sponsors, a $2,500 savings bond, reference materials from Encyclopaedia Britannica valued at more than $3,800 and an engraved cup. A donation of $5,000 plus 50 reference works will be made to the school or library of the champion's choice.

The National Spelling Bee began in 1925. Besides Evan, two other Californians have won -- Rageshree Ramachandran of the Sacramento area in 1988 and Anurag Kashyap of Poway in 2005.