Harini Logan, a girl of Indian descent, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday in 2022. The Texas 8th grade student won the competition by correctly spelling more words in a spell, the first since the Bee’s 1925 inception.
Ms. Logan defeated Vikram Raju, another student of Indian descent, who is studying 7th grade in Denver.
The Spelling Bee had its tense moments when both contestants failed to spell correctly two words in a row between rounds 13 and 18, reported USA today† This prompted the judges to choose a spell-off — a 90-second round of correctly spelling as many words as possible, the report said.
While Ms. Logan spelled 21 words correctly, her opponent was only able to pick out 15, leading to her win.
The DailyExpertNews reported that a heartbreaking moment came for Ms Logan, 14, when she was eliminated in the final. But the jury later decided that the definition they had given for the word pullulation was acceptable.
This was Ms. Logan’s fourth and final appearance in the Bee, and she called the win “surreal,” according to NYT†
Vikram Raju, 12, stood with head bowed after the three-hour match. But when presenter LeVar Burton asked him if he would return to the Bee next year, the answer was a resounding “yes”.
Indian Americans have always dominated the competition, but last year the streak was broken after 14-year-old Zaila Avantgarde became the first-ever African-American entrant to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The National Bee is as much a high-profile high-pressure endurance test as a geek spelling contest, and spellers spend months preparing for it.
The Bee was canceled in 2020 – for the first time since World War II – due to the coronavirus pandemic. But there were eight co-champions in 2019, seven of whom were Indian Americans.