From “bailliage”, which refers to the authority of a medieval officer, to “kakiemon”, which is a Japanese decorated porcelain, spellers easily mastered a number of foreign tongue-twisters.
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An Internet troll found out the hard way that the kids on stage aren’t the only people who can spell at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
For the third time in three years, two students shared the Scripps National Spelling Bee championship Thursday night. Co-champion Nihar Janga channeled Bryant after his win, crossing his arms above his head to mimic Bryant’s move. But each speller got too many of those right for a victor to be decided. The contest had instituted a 25-round spell-off to try and avoid just such a deadlock. It was the third year in a row that the bee ended in a tie. The two winners will each receive $45,000 cash and prizes. Here’s Jairam hearing the sounds “yitt-sha” and thinking, “Oh, sure, g-y-t-t-j-a”.
Jairam is the younger brother of the 2014 co-champion, Sriram Hathwar. “If you both spell the next word correctly, you will be declared co-champions”.
In the other, we had Nihar, the smartest and swaggiest child I have ever seen. Despite bowing out of the competition in the final round, Ansah, who draws inspiration from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie held her own.
Before that, Janga – nicknamed “The Machine” during the competition, correctly spelled words like bailliage, euchologion, promyshlennik and others that we may or may not know how to spell ourselves. Nihar, at the age of 11, is the youngest victor of the competition on record. Even though he had two minutes, Nihar often finished spelling within 30 seconds. However, he was pretty stylish during the competition and defined words to exude his knowledge along with the spelling. But, much like a tennis match, Nihar subsequently faltered himself, making their tie seem like spelling bee destiny. Nihar had two opportunities to win the title outright, but missed both times.
Dez tweeted out his respect to Nihar following his victory and celebration. “I’m glad that I got this far, but I really think I should have been able to figure that out, so I am disappointed by that”.
“I couldn’t make it to the final, but it was OK”, he said. Only two were so good that they couldn’t come up with words to stump them. “I mean, I’m just in fifth grade”, drawing laughter from the crowd. Nihar said he just did not know the words.
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There are elements of luck, the student’s exposure to reading and life experiences, she said.
