OXON HILL, Md. — The 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee ended in a way none of the 93 competitions before it did.
A spell-off.
The final two competitors, Vikram Raju and Harini Logan, had trouble deciphering their words between Round 13 and 18. At that point, judges opted to institute the first spell-off – 90 seconds to spell as many words as possible correctly. The winner would win the Bee.
Logan – an eighth-grader from Texas – spelled 21 words correctly, compared to Raju’s 15, to become the 2022 champion.
“Just so surreal, this is such a dream,” Logan, competing in her fourth national competition, said.
Logan, 14, nearly didn’t advance past the word meaning round. She’d heard the tragic bell after her answer for “pullulation” was rejected. However, the judges conferred during a break and ruled that the answer she gave could be correct, since it could be “to breed” or “to swarm.”
Logan rolled through the rest of the spelling until her stalemate with Raju, which led to the spell-off.
It was like a round of Family Feud’s “Fast Money” met the Spelling Bee. The typical questions competitors may ask the pronouncer – part of speech, etymology and definition – appeared on a screen they could see. Each word had to be attempted – no skips or passes – and the speller had to press a buzzer before the next word appeared.
“At first I was a little uneasy and just decided to take it in stride,” Logan said of the spell-off. “We knew it was going to be a part of the competition, if it came down to it.”
Logan took home the $50,000 cash prize and Scripps Cup trophy on top of awards from Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica.
Thursday’s first round – heavy on scientific and vegetation-related terms like “Pachytylus” – eliminated five of the 13 finalists.
To discourage the strict memorization of words and emphasize a wholistic approach to language, the Bee began incorporating multiple-choice “word meaning” rounds last year. Competitors aren’t asked to spell; instead, they are given a word with three definitions and they must choose the correct one.
The lone word-meaning round on Thursday proved to be a litmus test, as it was for all of the 234 spellers who traveled to Maryland for the finals. Half of the remaining field bowed out.
One of those four was Kirsten Santos, a sixth-grander from Arizona who wore a jean jacket and bedazzled headband and was the second-youngest competitor to advance to the 2022 final.
“OK,” Santos calmly replied into the microphone.
The exercise nearly cost Logan a shot at the trophy. Instead, she advanced into the 10th round alongside Raju, Vihaan Sibal and 13-year-old Saharsh Vuppala, who left off one “l” at the end of “phenocoll.”
“I know there are words with ‘coll’ at the end,” he told host LeVar Burton afterward, “and I was just debating if I should put the second ‘l’ in.”
One letter – in a word or among the multiple choice options – makes all the difference.
Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism