BANGOR – The second time was a charm for Brody Winn, 13, of Old Town.

After finishing as the runner-up at last year’s state spelling bee, Winn won this year’s title on Saturday afternoon during the Maine State Spelling Bee at Rangeley Hall at Eastern Maine Community College.

A seventh-grader at J.A. Leonard Middle School in Old Town, Winn sealed the victory by correctly spelling the word “drollery,” which means quaint or wry humor.

After making his way through words such as “gastroenterology” and “extemporaneous” earlier in the bee, Winn was a little nervous about spelling the word he had heard only once or twice when he was so close to claiming the title, he said later.

“I knew the whole spelling bee rested on that last word,” Winn said Sunday. “I thought, ‘I can probably figure out how to spell this.'”

After asking for the definition and the etymology, Winn made it through “drollery” and was confronted by an excited feeling he hadn’t felt during the last state bee.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m going to Washington this time,'” Winn said.

Winn will compete against 260 students during the week of May 31 at the 77th Annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

Coordinated by the Bangor Daily News, Saturday’s bee started with 16 spellers, one from each county, and lasted less than an hour.

Runner-up Emma Mohney of Gardiner Regional Middle School went out after she misspelled “extemporaneous,” according to pronouncer Timothy Allen.

Judges for the event were Barbara McDade, director of the Bangor Public Library; Kathryn Olmstead, associate professor of journalism at the University of Maine; and W. Gregory Swett, dean of students and enrollment management at EMCC.