Scripps had said pullulation meant the swarming of bees. The judges reinstated Harini after concluding that she was not incorrect when she said that pullulation meant the nesting of mating birds. Ting Shen for The New York TimesĪn avid reader who said she plans to write her first book when she is in high school, Harini had never been to the finals until this year, tying for 31st in 2021, tying for 30th in 2019 and tying for 323rd in 2018.īut during the pandemic, when spellers competed in various Zoom bees, she gained a reputation as a confident speller who rarely lost, Zaila said. Harini and Vikram watching as another speller, Vihaan Sibal, attempts to spell the word “mercator.” Credit. “Everybody literally screamed when that bell rung.”
“Harini getting out was horrible and unexpected,” said Zaila, who attended the competition. Her apparent loss shocked spellers who were backstage in the so-called Losers’ Lounge, said Zaila Avant-garde, last year’s winner and the first Black American to win the Bee.
Surya got back in, correctly spelling “ schläger,” a type of sword.īut he was knocked out in the word-meaning round, which eliminated several spellers - and, briefly, Harini. Scripps agreed but said he would have to spell a new word correctly to make the finals. In the semifinals, Surya had misspelled “leucovorin” - a medicine used in cancer therapy - but his family appealed, arguing that he had not received relevant root information about the word. Burton announced that Surya Kapu, a 13-year-old from South Jordan, Utah, who had been eliminated in the semifinals, had been given another chance to compete. The night began almost as dramatically as it ended. “And of what we can do to make sure that the innocence they have and the gifts and creativity they have are not taken away by fear.” Tracey Flemings-Davillier, the president of the New Orleans (La.) Chapter of The Links, an organization that has sponsored a local bee for decades, said that with the country grappling with a mass shooting that killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers, the contest was a much-needed reminder of the power of education and what children can achieve.īees are a “celebration of our children and how precious they are,” she said. Its return was welcomed by many educators, enthusiasts and viewers. Burton proclaimed Thursday night, starting off the finals of a contest that has remained a nerve-racking exhibition of intellectual vigor and stamina since its inception in 1925. This year’s contest was the first fully in-person bee since 2019, and the first in years not to be broadcast on ESPN. You could really get a sense of the daily work. “Watching that spell-off, you got a real sense of the actual work of preparing for the Bee,” said Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and the author of “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries.” The spellers, she said, had spent months with “rapid-fire spelling over the dinner table, during car pool, after school. To viewers, the pressure of the moment felt akin to penalty kicks in a high-stakes soccer tournament. Vikram Raju, 12, a seventh grader from Denver, during the spell-off round. Vikram stood nearby with his family, visibly trembling and his head bowed with the high emotions of the three-hour contest.īut when the Bee’s host, LeVar Burton, asked Vikram if he would return in 2023, for what would be his last eligible year, the boy, shaking but sounding resolute, gave a decisive “yes.” It was a tense victory that came after she was briefly eliminated, and then reinstated, earlier in the finals, when the judges decided that a definition she had given for the word “pullulation” was acceptable. “This is just such a dream,” Harini said Thursday night, as she held the trophy during the national television broadcast.
After several agonizing minutes, the Bee’s pronouncer announced the results: Harini had spelled 21 words correctly, compared with 15 for Vikram. What followed was a blistering showdown between the spellers, each rattling off word after word so quickly that the judges had to go to video to determine a winner. It was time for the spell-off, a 90-second lightning round that had never been used in the nearly 100-year history of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Harini, a 14-year-old eighth grader from San Antonio, exchanged a nervous look with Vikram, a 12-year-old seventh grader from Aurora, Colo. Neither could quite clinch a victory there, and a lectern with a buzzer was wheeled out.
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