After 25 head-to-head rounds, according to the BBC, the co-champs sealed the deal with words “elden” (Hathwar) and “gesellschaft” (Janga).
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Nihar, only 11-years-old, became the youngest victor of the Bee. Hathwar nearly fell out of the competition twice when he misspelled the words “drahthaar”, a breed of dog, and “mischsprache”, a language.
Nihar Janga, 11, of Austin, Texas, and Jairam Hathwar, 13, of Painted Post, N.Y., won the Bee on Thursday, and as part of a celebration Janga paid tribute to his favorite football team, the Cowboys. He follows in the footsteps of his brother Sriram, who was a co-winner in 2014.
Each receives $45,000 in cash and prizes.
This is the third tie in a row at the bee.
Rebekah Zeigler, a student at Centennial Elementary School, made her second trip to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland.
After the win, Janga, the youngest champion since 2002, thanked his mother and told reporters: “I can’t say anything. I’m just in fifth grade”.
The finalists were determined from more than 280 competitors after two days of written and oral tests in a Washington suburb. The final rounds lasted longer.
“I wanted to win, but at the same time, I felt really bad for Jairam”, he said. Nihar and Jairam had to spell 24 words each before sharing the trophy.
Some of the other hard words in the competition were groenedael, Hohenzollern, and euchologion. This was the 89th bee, and while Scripps’ records from early years are incomplete, the youngest known champion was Wendy Guey, who won 20 years ago at age 12. “He’s going to go places”. As they have been for the last nine consecutive years (and 14 of the last 19), the winners are the children of Indian immigrants.
Jairam plans to study medicine at Harvard, and Nihar wants to be a neurosurgeon.
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“I feel like I should have been able to figure it out”, she said.
