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With two finalists standing as time ran out,
the annual competition went to a spell-off, a rapid-elimination
method introduced in 2021, for just the second time.
Bruhat advanced to the spell-off by correctly spelling "Hoofddorp,"
a town near Amsterdam.
That put him head-to-head with Faizan Zaki, a 12-year-old from
Allen, Texas, who nailed "nicuri," a word derived from a
Brazilian palm, without asking any questions about its origin or
definition.
Bruhat then raced through a list of words in the spell-off,
getting 29 before time ran out. Faizan correctly spelled 20
words from the same list in his 90 seconds.
That gave the prestigious trophy and $50,000 prize to Bruhat, a
basketball fan who was shown shooting hoops in a recorded
segment earlier in the televised event.
Thursday's eight finalists came from regional competitions that
narrowed the field to 245 local winners, ages 8 to 15, for the
final three days of competition at a convention center outside
Washington.
Some of the finalists fell victim to such brain-teasers as
Lillooet (a people from modern British Columbia), "kanin"
(boiled rice in the Philippines) and "murrina" (a horse
disease).
Challenged with some of the most difficult and least-used words
that English has to offer, many young competitors amazed
spectators with their ability to produce the correct spellings
with poise and precision.
The Scripps media group has sponsored the event since 1925, with
three years off during World War Two and one more for the COVID
pandemic in 2020.
Most competitors were from the United States, coming from all 50
states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of
Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Canada, the
Bahamas, Germany and Ghana were also represented this year.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Frank McGurty, Cynthia
Osterman and Neil Fullick)
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