Indian-American Shrey Parikh wins Scripps National Spelling Bee competition

Judges determined that Shrey, a 14-year-old Indian-American student from California, spelled 32 words correctly during the spell-off, as against Ishaan Gupta's 25 words

Shrey Parikh, a 14-year-old Indian-American student from California, on Friday won the Scripps National Spelling Bee after he spelled 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 $50,000, a commemorative medal, the Scripps Cup, as well as $2,500 from Merriam-Webster, $1,000 in flight credits from Delta, and $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 could, served from the same list.

Judges determined that Shrey spelled 32 words correctly during the spell-off, as against Ishaan's 25 words.

Twelve-year-old Sarv Dharavane from Georgia finished third.