Eight finalists will spell their hearts out Thursday night, hoping to take home the brightly painted Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy, along with more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.
The champion won't be Shradha Rachamreddy, who finished third last year and was a consensus favorite to go all the way. She was eliminated Wednesday on exactly the sort of "super short, tricky word" she said she concentrated on studying after misspelling "orle" last year. This year it was "varan," a type of lizard. She added an extra "r," and former spellers in the audience gasped at her mistake.
"I am in shock and despair," said Dev Shah, the 2023 champion.
"We all thought she was going to win," added Charlotte Walsh, last year's runner-up.
Starting in the quarterfinals, the bee's word panel can use any of the more than half a million words in Webster's Unabridged dictionary, plus some geographical names that aren't even listed in that volume. While the panel tries to maintain a consistent level of difficulty in each round, it can vary from word to word.
This year's finalists are Rishabh Saha, 14; Shrey Parikh, 12; Aditi Muthukumar, 13; Bruhat Soma, 12; YY Liang, 12; Ananya Rao Prassanna, 13; Faizan Zaki, 12; and Kristen Tiffany Santos, 13.
Bruhat, a seventh-grader from Tampa, Florida, will try to run his winning streak to four on Thursday night, when he competes for the championship title against seven other spellers, some of whom he vanquished in those other bees.
The number of finalists is the fewest since 2010, when Scripps had to stop a semifinal round out of fear it would bring too few spellers to the primetime telecast, then on ABC. The bee is now broadcast on Ion — owned by Scripps, a Cincinnati-based media company — and when Wednesday's last semifinal round had a lengthy delay after six of the first 10 spellers missed their words, a similar stoppage didn't appear out of the question.
Scripps said the delay was due to the technical issues that plagued the bee all day. Live results weren't posted as usual, and at one point, former champion Kavya Shivashankar, tasked with saying a heartfelt goodbye to spellers who heard the bell, was handed the biography of the wrong speller and began reading it before the crowd informed her of the mix-up.
Despite some surprising eliminations in the semifinals, the eight finalists are the usual impressive group — albeit on the young side. Only three are eighth-graders in their final year of eligibility.
Shrey and Faizan are close friends with Bruhat, and all three are tutored by Evans.
"I'm not really surprised that any of my students have made it this far. I know that they are all prepared. They have what it takes to win, all of them," Evans said.
Bruhat in particular has impressed his coach and other onlookers with his clear command of the dictionary.
"We get through so many words per class, more than I've seen with any other speller. His work ethic is incredible," Evans said. "Once he misses a word, he very rarely would miss it again. He sees it and he remembers it."
Faizan became a crowd favorite during the semifinals for his fist-pumping excitement when he spelled correctly, and for his empathy — he rushed over and gave a big hug to his good friend Aryan Khedkar when Aryan was eliminated.
"It was just so sad to see him lose in his last year," Faizan said. "So I just wanted to be supportive and, like, get him through this tough time."
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