WASHINGTON — Nearly 250 of the best spellers in the country were whittled down to two, and after a spell-off, we have a champion for the National Spelling Bee.
Shrey Parikh and Ishaan Gupta were the final two spellers standing when they went into the lightning-round tiebreaker, The Associated Press reported.
The pair each had 90 seconds to spell dozens of words. The one with the most correctly spelled words won.
That turned out to be Shrey, who spelled 32 words to Ishaan’s 25, the AP reported.
“Spelling fast is what I do every day, so you know the spell-off kind of came naturally and it was just another day of spelling,” Shrey said after the win, The Washington Post reported.
Third place went to Sarv Dharavane.
AP noted that the spell-off moves so fast, it is initially difficult to know which word was the winner, but Spelling Bee sponsor Scripps said that the winning word was “bromocriptine,” which is a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics the activity of dopamine.
The hardest word for Shrey was “Bhubaneswar,” according to The Washington Post.
Shrey is 14 years old and an 8th-grader at Day Creek Intermediate School in San Bernardino, California, Scripps said.
In addition to his $50,000 in cash winnings, Shrey will have a trip to Universal Orlando Resort among other prizes, The Washington Post reported.
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