At just 11-years-old, Nihar is the youngest victor in the bee on record, according to ESPN. Tonight’s finals concluded at 8 P.M. EDT with two new national champions: Jairam Hathwar and Nihar “The Machine” Janga. The latter squandered two chances of winning the competition all by himself but held his nerve to spell the third word correctly and become the youngest champion on record.
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Both he and Jairam will get a trophy and $45,000 (£30,700) in cash and prizes. “I can’t say anything, I’m only in fifth grade”. The co-champions were 13 year old Jairam Hathwar and 11 year old Nihar “The Machine” Janga.
Thursday’s spellers are the cream of 11 million students who took part in Bee contests in the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, Defense Department schools in Europe and six foreign countries, including Jamaica and Japan. He just didn’t know the words.
Jairam, of Painted Post, New York, misspelled two words.
“I wanted to win, but at the same time I felt really bad for Jairam”, Nihar said.
Snehaa Ganesh Kumar from California, who studies in class 8, had tied for fourth place a year ago.
When Nebraska’s Tharein Potuhera correctly spelled the word “propinquity” at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, he did what any of us would have done…he dabbed on em’.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee brought 284 students from around the nation and the world to test their word power this week.
The championship finals will be broadcast live on ESPN Thursday night.
Both Jairam and Nihar said they knew some of the words they were given and figured out the spelling of the rest.
After two straight years of co-champions, the Spelling Bee made changes to ensure there would not be a third straight year of co-champions. Second, most of the crowd’s attention was on an even younger speller: 6-year-old Akash Vukoti. It would’ve been cool to see these kids dueling into next week, each unable to spell a word wrong. Ultimately, both boys emerged as co-champions.
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This is for the ninth successive year that Indian- Americans won the prestigious Scripps Spelling Bee and 13th in the last 16 years.
