Fifth grader Nihar is from Texas, while seventh grader Jairam is from NY. Finally, it came down to Jairam and Nihar.
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Jairam and Nihar ended co-winners when the former got “feldenkrais” – a method of education, and the latter nailed “gesellschaft”, a type of social relationship. Both winners took home trophies along with a whopping $45,000 dollars.
“I know (Jairam) and he is one of my best spelling friends so I was really happy for him”, Nihar said. “I’m only in fifth grade”.
The pair also correctly spelled Kjeldahl, Hohenzollern, juamave, groenedael, zindiq and euchologion. Jairam is the younger brother of the 2014 co-champion. In the end, the two superstar spellers were named co-champs – the third year in a row the Bee has ended in a tie.
It turns out the Twitter account for the Scripps National Spelling Bee packs a major sting!
They hailed from California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York and Texas.
“Scripps Spelling Bee is a tie (again)!” He then successfully spelled “demulcent”, which means soothing. Later the same day, it was down to 10 for the evening championship, broadcast live on ESPN.
And what does the future hold for the two master spellers?
In prior years, only 25 predetermined words were set, but this year as many as 75 words were prepared for the competition.
“When I missed those two words, I didn’t let them get to my head, and I just focused on the next word”, Jairam said.
“We frankly wanted to shed light on just how hard this competition is and what it takes to be a champion-these are not easy words, and it’s impressive to watch a 6-year-old accurately and enthusiastically spell out loud a word you’ve likely never even heard before”, Neil Lindsay, Amazon’s vice president of devices, told Mashable in an email.
For the first time, competitors included a first-grader – 6-year-old Akash Vukoti ofSan Angelo, Texas.
This was Jairom’s second trip in a row to the spelling bee – he was a semifinalist previous year.
The tie is the third in a row in the Bee, a United States institution since 1925.
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The other four Indian-Americans among the finalists were Rutvik Gandhasri, Sreeniketh Vogoti, Jashun Paluru and Smirithi Upadhyayula.
