|
 Vinay, 12, correctly spelled the word marocain, a dress
fabric made of warp of silk or rayon and a filling of other
yarns, to win the spelling bee held at the Gaylord National
Resort and Convention Center in suburban Washington.
She said she felt "amazing" after defeating Rohan Rajeev, 14, of
Edmond Oklahoma during the stirring 25-word championship round.
"It was just fun to see how far it would go," Vinay said.
The two determined spellers went back and forth for about 45
minutes, peeling off word after word in tense competition of
spelling prowess.
Cheirotompholyx, durchkomponiert and tchefuncte were among the
words the two spelled correctly during the round. In the end,
Rajeev misspelled the word marram before Vinay spelled two words
correctly to win the bee.
Vinay plans to split the money with her 7-year-old brother and
put it in to her college account.
"She had a deep passion for reading. The biggest thing that she
wants to do is sit and read," her father Vinay Sreekumar said.
Competitors age 6 to 15 emerged from early spelling bees
involving more than 11 million youths from all 50 U.S. states,
U.S. territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several
countries, from Jamaica to Japan.
In earlier rounds, some spellers tripped over words including
Corriedale, toreutics, cleidoic and panettone, weeding down the
field headed for the finish of the 90th national Bee.
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Others hung on by correctly spelling catafalque, outarde and
chryselephantine.
"What?!" exclaimed Maggie Sheridan, 13, from Mansfield, Ohio,
throwing her hands up in disbelief when she learned she correctly
spelled whirlicote, a type of luxurious carriage, with one second to
spare.
Marlene Schaff, 14, was ousted by misspelling cleidoic, which means
to be enclosed in a relatively impervious shell, like an egg.
“I’m disappointed because I was debating between two spellings,”
said Schaff of Lake Forest, Illinois.
The youngest-ever competitor, Edith Fuller of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who
turned 6 on April 22, was eliminated from the competition late on
Wednesday.
New rules this year are aimed at preventing tie endings like last
year's, when two joint winners both got $40,000 cash prizes.
(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Barbara
Goldberg in New York and Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Lisa
Shumaker, Peter Cooney and Michael Perry)
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