KING OF BEES IS CROWNED : MARATHON MATCH SEES NEW SPELLING CHAMP.

Byline: Dennis Love Daily News Staff Writer

There are spelling bees. And then there are spelling bees for the ages.

Thirty-three middle-school spelling champions and 200 spectators from across Los Angeles gathered Saturday at Taft High School in Woodland Hills for the Daily News Spelling Bee, with the winner to earn a trip to Washington, D.C., in May for a highly coveted shot at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Championship.

By Round 13, only defending champion and prohibitive favorite Mhair Orchanian and newcomer Cesar Santiago, both 13, still were standing.

And one hour and 40 minutes later, after 72 exhausting, astonishing and, well, spellbinding rounds of pressurized, high-wire, mano y mano one-upmanship, it was a sweat-drenched Santiago who emerged as the upset winner.

It all came down to ``paroxysmal,'' four devilish little syllables that stymied Orchanian. ``Paroxysmal'' means ``accompanied by sudden attacks or spasms,'' and it meant the end for the champ, who inserted a fatal ``i'' for the ``y.''

And the bell - the cruel, awful bell that denotes disqualification - went ping, a sound that had not been heard in the Taft auditorium for what seemed like a lifetime. No one seemed to know which was more unlikely: That one of these spellers had actually bungled a word, or that the bell hadn't rusted from disuse.

Orchanian could only watch disconsolately as Santiago - not only Saturday's most accurate speller, but by far its fastest - rattled off ``decennial'' to seal the victory, the 84th consecutive word he had spelled correctly during the marathon bee.

``I didn't think I could win,'' a glassy-eyed Santiago said a few minutes later, clutching his first-place trophy as if it might wrestle free. ``I was here as an alternate last year (for Holy Family Elementary School in Glendale) and sat in the audience and watched Mhair win . . . he was very good. No way I thought I could beat him.''

Orchanian, who finished 22nd nationally last year, was considered by bee prognosticators as an excellent bet to repeat as the regional champion. Then, with a year of experience in his favor, he figured to mount a serious charge in Washington at the Scripps Howard title.

But Orchanian himself seemed to sense danger. ``I'm a little pensive,'' he said during a break, just before he and Santiago crossed swords.

Ironically, Santiago said after the bee that he would have misspelled ``paroxysmal'' as well. ``I didn't know it,'' he said, shaking his head. ``I was lucky.''

Under rules used in bees past, Santiago would have been obliged to spell the word missed by his remaining opponent. But this year bee officials instituted rules used in the national contest, which specify that the winner simply must spell the next word on the list.

Yet it was hardly luck that propelled Santiago to his win. Standing rigidly in front of the microphone, fearless and quick, he blurted out the letters with rapid-fire confidence. While the cautious Orchanian routinely asked for definitions and sample usages - allowed under the rules - Santiago paused only when he detected a mispronunciation by the judge.

``It's like he just pushes a button

'' marveled Albert Chang, whose son Robert of Park View Junior High placed fourth in the competition. ``He doesn't wait for anything. It's amazing.''

Santiago's father, Cesar Santiago Sr., said his son studied for about three weeks for the bee, using a master list of hundreds of words provided by school officials.

Jack Orchanian said his son - a student at AGBU Manoogian-Demirdjian School, a private Armenian school in Canoga Park - had pored over the words sporadically for months, learning the definitions and roots of each word.

When the young Orchanian would test himself on all the eligible words, he typically would spell 99.8 percent of them correctly, said his father, an engineer.

And Orchanian fought gamely on Saturday. ``Ornithopter,'' ``panegyric,'' ``gongorism,'' ``derailleur,'' ``cordillera,'' ``botryoidal,'' ``sychnocarpous'' - he spelled them all with aplomb, even pulling out ``cochleariform'' in a cliffhanger to the audible gasps of the audience.

Yet Santiago was not be denied. ``Arbuscle,'' ``ratatouille,'' ``anadiplosis,'' ``brachylogy,'' ``angwantibo,'' ``upeygan,'' ``anacoluthon'' and ``axunge'' all blistered forth at lightning speed.

``Send them both

'' an audience member yelled during one pause. If not for ``paroxysmal,'' that might have been the only solution.

WORD POWER

A sampling of the words spelled correctly by Cesar Santiago and Mhair Orchanian during their 100-minute, 73-round duel Saturday at the Daily News Spelling Bee, with definitions:

slantindicular - somewhat oblique

accrescent - growing continuously; specifically; growing larger after flowering

ornithopter - a heavier-than-air airplane deriving its chief support and propulsion from flapping wings

cochleariform - shaped like a spoon

derailleur - a mechanism for shifting gears on a bicycle that operates by moving the chain from one set of exposed gears to another

rhabdomancer - one who practices divination by rods or wands

bradyseism - a slow quiet upward or downward movement of the Earth's crust

bouquiniste - a dealer in secondhand books

chasmophyte - a plant that grows in rock crevices

faveolate - honeycombed

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, box

PHOTO (1 -- color) WINNER: Cesar Santiago

(2 -- color) RUNNER-UP: Mhair Orchanian

(3) Cesar Santiago, 13, and his mother, Tina, are all smiles as they look at his trophy for winning the Daily News Spelling Bee on Saturday.

David Sprague/Daily News

Box: Word power (see text)