Indian-American kid, 14, wins US National Spelling Bee title
Dev Shah, an Indian-American kid from Largo, Florida, who is 14 years old, won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday. In the 15th round of the competition’s finals, Dev correctly spelt the word “psammophile,” which refers to an organism that flourishes in sandy soils.
He defeated Arlington, Virginia, eighth-grader Charlotte Walsh, 14, who came in second when she mispelled “daviely,” a term with Scottish roots indicating listlessly, in the fourteenth round.
Shah, a student at Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School, properly and quickly spelt “bathypitotmeter” in the fourteenth round, but according to the rules of the spelling bee, he still needed to get one more word to win.
Shah, who was declared the winner in a burst of confetti before being joined on stage by his parents and other relatives, receives $50,000 cash from the bee’s sponsor, E.W. Scripps Co., in addition to other cash awards and reference materials from Merriam-Webster and Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The competition’s official dictionary is The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.
Dev, who enjoys playing the cello, reading, tennis and solving maths issues, tied for 51st position in the 2019 spelling bee and tied for 76th place in the 2021 competition.
He was one of 11 participants, ages 11 to 14, who won the three-day competition held in National Harbour, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., and progressed to the finals. The other competitors included 220 people.
94 females, 134 boys, and two spellers who identify as nonbinary made up the whole field this year. One rival did not identify their gender.
Live telecast of the bee. The suspense is increased by TV commentators who narrate the action as competitors struggle to remember the proper spellings for often cryptic terms.
Last year, Harini Logan, 14, of San Antonio, Texas, won the competition by properly spelling 22 words in a spell-off that lasted 90 seconds. It was the first time since the competition’s inception in 1925 that a spell-off determined the winner.
After 27 years on the cable sports channel ESPN, the 2022 programme was shown on ION and Bounce, both networks owned by a Scripps subsidiary. The finals will once again be broadcast on ION.
