No sweat for Nihar Janga, who would go on to become the co-champion, and who coincidentally has been called the Steph Curry of the Spelling Bee.
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Nihar correctly spelled the word “gesellschaft” and Jairam correctly spelled the word “Feldenkrais“.
Scripps made the bee tougher after two consecutive ties, forcing the last two spellers to get through three times as many words as in years past.
It was an exciting momentThursday night for 13-year-old Jairam Hathwar, taking home not only a trophy and major bragging rights, but $40,000! “I can’t say anything, I’m only in fifth grade”.
The other words the two got right included Kjeldahl, Hohenzollern, juamave, groenedael, zindiq and euchologion.
Cooper Komatsu, 13, of Culver City correctly spells “myoclonus” during the final round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Md., on Thursday.
Bee organizers decided to make changes after the competition ended in a tie the past two years. He almost won outright twice in the championship rounds following errors by Hathwar, but each time flubbed a single letter. She has a year of eligibility left and said she plans on winning the 2017 Arizona State Bee so she can come back to the national competition again next year.
For the third year in a row, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has ended with two champions. It’s not where you want to be, but hey, I can’t spell these words either, so I’m not going to fault the kids for it.
Of the five ties in its history, one was in 2014 and another was past year, when eighth-graders Gokul Venkatachalam of Chesterfield, Missouri, and Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, were co-winners. Judges can turn to tougher words if they think the spellers are getting through the first few too easily.
He hopes to attend Harvard University to study medicine someday so that he can become a physician.
The other American-Indians among the finalists were Rutvik Gandhasri, Sreeniketh Vogoti, Jashun Paluru and Smirithi Upadhyayula.
In the 37th round of spelling, both spellers misspelled their word, .
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Robert Rosenberg, the grandfather of speller Cooper Komatsu, competed in 1955, and Mira Dedhia’s mother, Lekshmi Nair, competed in 1988, 1989 and 1990.
