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US National Spelling Bee Contest
Shrey Parikh, a 14-year-old Indian-American student from California, on Friday won the Scripps National Spelling Bee after he spelt 32 words correctly in 90 seconds. Parikh won after beating Ishan Gupta of New Jersey. Parikh, who was also a finalist in the 2024 edition of the competition, takes home a slew of prizes, including "USD 50,000, a commemorative medal, the Scripps Cup, as well as USD 2,500 from Merriam-Webster, USD 1,000 in flight credits from Delta and USD 400 of reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The three-day competition began Monday at D.A.R. Constitution Hall here with 247 contestants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Defence Department schools in Europe and five other countries: the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. Nine contestants advanced to the finals that were held on Thursday evening. Shrey and Ishaan each had 90 seconds to correctly spell as many words as they co
Bruhat Soma, a 12-year-old Indian-American seventh-grade student from Florida, has won the Scripps National Spelling Bee after he spelt 29 words correctly in the tiebreaker, maintaining the dominance of the children from the small ethnic community in the prestigious competition. Bruhat emerged victorious in the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, earning more than USD 50,000 in cash and other prizes. This year's contest came down to a tiebreaker in which Bruhat spelt 29 words correctly in 90 seconds, beating Faizan Zaki, who managed to correctly spell 20 words in the lightning round. His championship word was abseil, which is defined as descent in mountaineering by means of a rope looped over a projection above. Bruhat went first in the tiebreaker, and after he got through 30 words, it appeared he would be impossible to beat. Faizan's pace was more uneven at the outset. He attempted 25 words but flubbed four of them. Bruhat Soma rules the word! The Champion of the 2024 Scri
When Balu Natarajan became the first Indian American champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 1985, a headline on an Associated Press article read, Immigrants' son wins National Spelling Bee, with the first paragraph noting the champion speaks his parents' native Indian language at home. Those details would hardly be newsworthy today after a quarter-century of Indian American spelling champs, most of them the offspring of parents who arrived in the United States on student or work visas. This year's bee is scheduled to begin Tuesday at a convention centre outside Washington and, as usual, many of the expected contenders are Indian American, including Shradha Rachamreddy, Aryan Khedkar, Bruhat Soma and Ishika Varipilli. Nearly 70 per cent of Indian-born US residents arrived after 2000, according to census data, and that dovetails with the surge in Indian American spelling bee champions. There were two Indian American Scripps winners before 1999. Of the 34 since, 28 have been
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