With the National Geographic Bee firmly behind us, it’s time for the Super Bowl of competitive nerdery—the Scripps National Spelling Bee!

Starting today, 278 spellers are gathering at the Gaylord National Harbor just south of D.C. for the annual spelling competition, including Lori Anne Madison, a Lake Ridge, Virginia local who at six years of age has become the youngest competitor in the contest’s history. Reports the AP:

“She’s like a teenager in a 6-year-old body,” Sorina said. “Her brain, she understands things way ahead of her age.”

It’s hard to argue with that, especially after spending a couple of hours with her. There’s been no need for Lori Anne’s parents to push her to do anything – because she’s already way out in front dragging them along. Some kids are ahead of the curve physically, mentally or socially from a very young age. Lori Anne is the rare exception who defies the norms in every category.

She hit all her milestones early, walking and talking well before others in her playgroup. She was reading before she was 2. She swims four times a week, keeping pace with 10-year-old boys, and wants to be in the Olympics. When her mother tried to enroll her in a private school for the gifted, the headmaster said Lori Anne was just way too smart to accommodate and needed to be home-schooled.

Madison is joined by 13 other spellers from Virginia, while Maryland is represented by nine spellers. D.C. only has one—Tuli Jahan Bennett-Bose, a 12-year-old from the Oyster Bilingual School. Virginia has won the contest twice since it first started in 1925 (in 1984 and 1992), while neither Maryland nor D.C. have ever taken home the championship.

Today all of the spellers take a 50-word computerized test, 25 of which count towards their preliminary scores. (Last year, getting any more than two wrong would spell the end of a competitor’s run.) Tomorrow, they spell two words on stage, with three points for each one they get right. By tomorrow afternoon, 50 semifinalists will have been crowned and will battle for spelling supremacy on Thursday.