OXON HILL Md. (Reuters) - Pressure-busting one-liners were on full display as the tension-packed Scripps National Spelling Bee got under way on Wednesday.

Asking for the word in question to be used in a sentence is standard for the 281 youthful spellers, and presenter Jacques Bailly has built the routine into a low-key stick in which the contestants repeatedly say: "Do you have a funny sentence?"

When Mitchell Robson of Marblehead, Massachusetts, was given the word "Jacuzzi" to spell, Bailly illustrated it by saying, "After falling asleep in the jacuzzi, Brendan began fighting crime under the moniker of the Amazing Prune Man."

Robson, a sixth grader, responded: "He sounds like a really lame super hero," and aced the word, meaning a type of bath. Bailly then worked "the Amazing Prune Man" into sentences throughout the afternoon.

Bailly, who won the Bee in 1980, said the contest began incorporating humor in 2009. Some of the jokes are written beforehand by Bee staffers and some by comedy writers who also draft light-hearted sentences for Bailly to inject during the contest.

The sentence "is a place where we can sort of have a little fun and relax a little bit," Bailly, a classics professor, told reporters. "I think the kids appreciate it more than anyone else."

Illustrating "spelunker" for Sumedh Garimella, of Duluth, Georgia, Bailly said, "He was a spelunker, she collected bats. It was love at first cave visit." Garimella, an eighth grader, spelled the word for cave explorer correctly.

Forty-six spellers advanced to the semifinals and were taking computerized tests on Wednesday. The finals will be on Thursday night and televised on ESPN.

Among the finalists are Sriram Hathwar, of Painted Post, New York, who finished third last year, and Vanya Shivashankar, of Olathe, Kansas, who tied for fifth in 2013.

They emerged from a contest that originally involved more than 11 million students across the United States and seven countries.

Fifty-eight spellers were eliminated outright in the oral part. The typical reaction upon leaving the stage was a shrug, high fives to other contestants and hugs from family.

But one 13-year-old seventh grader, accompanied by a family member, left the hotel ballroom outside Washington in tears.

"I knew the word, my brains just blanked. Oh, God," he sobbed.

5 things to know about this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee

OXON HILL, Md. –  Here are five things to know about the 87th edition of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which began Tuesday and concludes Thursday with the finals broadcast in prime time.

1. NO MICROPHONES NEEDED

No one ventured onstage for the first day of competition, and the dreaded elimination bell did not ring. Instead, the spellers were ushered into a quiet room to take a spelling and vocabulary test on a computer, while parents sat anxiously in a waiting room or in the hallway outside. There were 24 words to spell and 26 words to define, and the scores will be combined with Wednesday's oral rounds to determine the semifinalists. The vocabulary portion was introduced last year and is proving a challenge for some, but at least it's multiple choice.

"Vocab is not my strong suit," said 14-year-old Madhav Gampala of Bradley, Illinois. "But there were ones that I did know. There were a few where I was kind of stumped because I'd never heard of them."

2. JUST LIKE OTHER KIDS

The Bee's poll of the 281 spellers shows they're a lot like kids everywhere. Sixty-eight percent attend public schools. Taylor Swift came out on top as favorite musician. "Divergent" and "Harry Potter" are the favorite movies and books. Soccer and basketball are the favorite sports. Then again, some differences start to surface when it came to favorite TV shows: "The Big Bang Theory" and "Doctor Who" ranked first and second. Also, when asked which college they hope to attend, the top answers were Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Yale.

3. IT'S IN THE BLOOD

Many eyes will be on 12-year-old Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, a top-five finisher a year ago who once again will attempt to become the back-half of the first sibling tandem of champions in Bee history, following the path blazed by sister Kavya in 2009. But there's another speller with a chance to accomplish that feat: 14-year-old Ashwin Veeramani of Cleveland watched his older sister, Anamika, win in 2010. Ashwin is back for a second time, having finished tied for 33rd last year.

4. ENGLISH AROUND THE WORLD

The Bee attracts English spellers from all over. This year, there are competitors from American Samoa, the Bahamas, Canada, China, Italy, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the U.S. Virgin Islands. There have been two winners from outside the 50 U.S. states: Hugh Tosteson from Puerto Rico in 1975 and Jody-Anne Maxwell from Jamaica in 1998.

5. WILL THE STREAK CONTINUE?

The last six champions and 11 of the last 15 have been Indian-American, including 2013 winner Arvind Mahankali of New York, who correctly spelled "knaidel" and then was invited to a Manhattan deli a few days later to sample the food that had just made him famous. The Indian-American success began when Nupur Lala won in 1999. Lala was featured in the documentary "Spellbound."