Sukanya Roy, of South Abington Township, Pa, holds up the trophy after winning the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition June 2, in National Harbor, Maryland. Her final winning word : 'cymotrichous'
Posted on 06/03/2011 4:42:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- In the end 14-year-old Sukanya Roy of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with her penchants for writing invisible words on her palm, emerged the victor of the late night showdown at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Her word: cymotrichous, meaning having the hair wavy.
"It's just amazing. It's hard to fine the words," said Sukanya, who has spent the last three days working her way through an impressively complicated set of words with origins from around the globe.
One by one, other Bee hopefuls were ultimately defeated by such polysyllabic tongue-twisters as sciamachy, a word that means fighting with a shadow or imaginary enemy. The Scripps National Spelling Bee hosted 275 spellers this year from across the country and the Bahamas, Canada, China, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Thirteen spellers competed in the finals round Thursday night, live on ESPN, in hopes of winning $30,000 among other prizes.
It was a tough road to the finals.
In the semifinals round, Plano, Texas, native Narahari Bharadwaj was felled by the word ceratorhine, any of a group of two-horned rhinoceroses having well-developed lower canine teeth.
He added an extra "r."
For Narahari, it was a disappointing end to his quest to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. He made it within striking distance of landing in the finals.
Alas, it was not to be. After misspelling the word he hung his head and walked to the side of the stage to wait on his parents.
"I was thinking whether I should double the 'r' or not," the 13-year-old said afterward.
Prakash Mishra stepped up his training after his run in last year's National Spelling Bee ended in the third round. And for a while it looked as if his hour-a-day regimen would amount to a big pay off.
The 13-year-old Union County, N.C., eighth-grader correctly spelled "phreatophyte" in round seven of the semifinals to advance to Thursday night's championship round. He was his state's only representative in the National Spelling Bee.
Wearing a shirt emblazoned with a splash of yellow - his lucky color - Prakash looked poised as he rattled off one correct spelling after another onstage at the annual Washington, D.C., competition. At times, he even looked relaxed, in contrast to some contestants whose nerves got the best of them.
He rarely hesitated as he breezed through turophile, baize, empressement and finally phreatophyte - a deep-rooted plant that gets water from the water table or soil above it.
Prakash was felled by the word susurrus, which is a soft, whispering or rustling sound.
Director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee and 1981 bee champ, Paige Pipkin Kimble, said the competition gives academically precocious children a chance to shine.
"They want to be stars and this program provides a fabulous opportunity not only for children to learn and excel," Kimble said. "But be recognized for their talents."
That’s completely kroxadelphific.
“...fine the words”? Too bad the reporter can’t spell.
Here are the champions of the Scripps national Spelling Bee the past 9 years and their sponsors and where they live... Do you notice what I’m noticing by looking at the names of most of the winners?
______________________________________________________________________________________________
2002 Pratyush Buddiga, Rocky Mountain News Denver, Colorado
2003 Sai R. Gunturi, The Dallas Morning News Dallas, Texas
2004 David Tidmarsh, South Bend Tribune South Bend, Indiana
2005 Anurag Kashyap, San Diego Union-Tribune San Diego, California
2006 Kerry Close, Asbury Park Press/Home News Tribune Spring Lake, New Jersey
2007 Evan O’Dorney, Contra Costa Times Walnut Creek, California
2008 Sameer Mishra, Journal and Courier West Lafayette, Indiana
2009 Kavya Shivashankar, The Olathe News Olathe, Kansas
2010 Anamika Veeramani, The Plain Dealer Cleveland, Ohio
2011 Sukanya Roy, Times Leader Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Seriously??! Leave it to an "American" journalist completely screw up a Spelling Bee story.
How is it the article didn’t mention here “school”????
Any bets she is home schooled and the press doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact?
Did anyone notice the percentage of recent winners who are of Indian heritage?
How is it the article didn’t mention here “school”????
HER school....!!!
I’m on cold meds........sheesh......
...But apparently my attention to writing detail sucks, too. Ughgh.
Good catch.
“Do you notice what I’m noticing by looking at the names of most of the winners?”
Yea, they got a head start. They already had a bunch of practice just learning to spell their names.
From http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/06/03/idINIndia-57470520110603 :
“An eighth grader at Abington Heights Middle School”
LOL.
But that’s odd. I’m not seeing any Shanequa’s or Anulikka’s on that list.
“Do you notice what I’m noticing by looking at the names of most of the winners?”
That’s because Indians take the education of their kids SERIOUSLY. While American kids are upstairs on video games and Facebook (or wasting their time playing sports that lead to nothing but concussions and other permanent injuries for 99.99% of the kids), Indian kids are in special after-school classes (all Indian, by the way), actually LEARNING what they should have been taught in their day-care school.
We Americans coddle kids and seem to want (or at least allow) them to do anything but sit down and learn - Indians are just the opposite.
Thankfully, we have a lot of Indians (and other high-grade immigrants) in this country, for without their academic standards, we would have been Third World decades ago, given our education system here, and our screw-up values.
I will never understand the big deal in this. Spelling odd words is part luck and part “acquired” skill. Big whoop.
I agree.
I am not a big fan of memory games.
However, the persistence and hard work needed to win such competitions probably have spin-offs in other realms.
I recall reading somewhere that a large proportion of Spelling Bee champs become neurosurgeons and cardiologists...
Too funny if you think about it....
Actually, IMHO, it should be a written test...because spelling is the "written" word.
Huh? Spell check wouldn't win the bee.
Yes ... I noticed. Tonto, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo were all home schooled too.
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