OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Bruhat Soma claims he was nervous during every spare moment while waiting to take the stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and he said he felt even more pressured considering he hadn’t lost a spelling bee in eight months.
But he never once showed signs of nervousness in front of the microphone, and couldn’t have been more calm when the match suddenly turned into a lightning-fast tiebreaker known as a “spell-off.”
The 12-year-old eighth-grader from Tampa, Florida, recited 30 words in 90 seconds on Thursday night, sounding more like an auctioneer than an English spelling whiz. The judges determined that he spelled 29 words correctly, nine more than his rival, Faizan Zaki. As the winner, Burhat will receive a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.
He practiced the spell every day for six months.
“I had practiced hard and I was confident I had a chance to win,” Bruhat said, explaining why he spent so much time on tiebreakers that might not have been necessary. “And I really wanted to win, so I practiced spell-off a lot.”
If Scripps had known how the final round would be conducted, he might have spent more time on speed training. There was no doubt that Bruhat was a worthy champion, but the result left many spectators disappointed and confused.
“I don’t think it was a good bee.” Last year’s champion, Dev Shah“It’s not about how many words you can spell in 90 seconds. That’s not what a spelling bee is about.”
The finals began with eight spellers, the fewest since 2010, and it was clear that Scripps was trying to fill a two-hour broadcast slot on Ion, a network owned by a Cincinnati-based media company. Frequent, long commercial breaks allowed the spellers to wander offstage and chat with coaches, relatives and supporters.
Then, before Burhat and Faizan were given the chance to compete in the regular round, tournament officials announced it was time for a tiebreaker.
“I would have liked to have seen more of them going head to head,” said Charlotte Walsh, runner-up to Dev in 2023.
Although tournament rules call for a spell-off to be used to save time, Scripps inserted another commercial break between the tiebreaker and the announcement of Bluhat’s victory.
“It felt very forced and fake,” Dev said.
According to Scripps, Bruhat’s winning word was “abseil,” which is defined as “in mountaineering, descending by throwing a rope over a protruding part of a mountain.” Harini Logan to win in 2022 The winning word is the word in which the speller manages to type one more correct word than their competitor.
Moments after Burhat was showered with confetti and presented with the trophy, a tearful Faizan was seen at the sidelines receiving hugs from his fellow spellers. Minutes earlier, he had embraced his close friend Shrey Parikh after she was eliminated.
Faizan spelled out the last word in the regular contest in a walk-off format and stormed through the “nikri” and back to his seat without a single question. Mic drop spell in Shourav Dasari’s “Mogoyon” 2017.
But the 12-year-old sixth-grader from Allen, Texas, wasn’t given a second chance.
“We believe they should have been given the opportunity to do some traditional spelling rounds before settling on the spell-off,” said Scott Remar, one of four coaches who worked with Faizan.
Prior to this competition, Bruhat won the Words of Wisdom bee hosted by Remar, a former speller and study-guide author. He also won the SpellPundit bee hosted by that study-guide company, and the first-ever online bee hosted by last year’s Scripps champion, Dev.
“I always want to win, and this has been my main goal,” said Bruhat. “It didn’t matter if I won all the other bees, this is what I was aiming for, so I’m really happy to win this time.”
His last loss was at Wishwin’s senior spelling bee in September, when he misspelled a cheese named after the English city of Gloucester. He knew the city but didn’t know it was also a cheese, so he guessed “Gloucester.”
“I guess after that I just kept winning,” he said.
Burhat said there was one word she didn’t know Thursday night: “tennesi,” the currency of Turkmenistan. Ananya Prasanna got it right in the competition’s toughest round, where every word was of unknown origin, difficult to understand or in a language that didn’t exist. Prasanna, 13, from Apex, North Carolina, finished in a tie for third place.
Bruhat is the second-straight winner from the Tampa Bay area, and with his win, 29 of the last 35 spelling champions have been Indian-American. His parents emigrated from Telangana, a majority-Indian American state in southern India. A string of Indian-American champions And then the competitors that started in 1999.
Nupur Lara was that year’s winner and has inspired a generation, especially since her win was featured in the documentary “Spellbound.” Now a neuro-oncologist, Lara returned to the bee world this year after a 10-year hiatus.
Bruhat’s win was also a proud moment for previously unknown former speller-turned-coach, Sam Evans, 16, who coached three of the top four finishers. Evans also tutored Faizan and Shree, both 12-year-olds from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., who are in the sixth grade and have two years of eligibility remaining.
Evans said he was amazed by Bruhat on multiple occasions by how his students would remember any word they saw and, once they got a word wrong, they would never get it wrong again.
“He always says he’s nervous, but he doesn’t seem nervous like most of the other guys,” Evans said. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know how he’s nervous.”
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Ben Nuckols has been covering the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. https://x.com/APBenNuckols
