This year’s Spelling Bee champion doesn’t schweat the Schwa

After 14 rounds of words like “probouleutic” and “zwitterion” and “schistorrhachis,” Dev Shah, an eighth grader from Florida, had to wait for another commercial break. If he spelled the following word correctly, he would win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

“Psammophile,” a plant or animal that prefers or thrives in sandy areas, is said to determine its fate.

He asked for all the information about the word – its definition, part of speech, spelling, use in a sentence – but he didn’t need it, as evidenced by a slight smile as he spoke. After three years of studying, he needed about 45 seconds to reach the apotheosis of his profession and become champion on Thursday evening.

“It’s surreal,” he said, holding the coveted Scripps Cup, the official championship trophy. “My legs are still shaking.”

Dev, 14, outlasted 228 other contestants, including 10 Thursday night finalists, to win $50,000 in cash and a commemorative medal. Charlotte Walsh, a second-place eighth grader from Virginia, will receive $25,000.

The moment was a highlight for Dev, who started participating in spelling bees in third grade and has been studying 10 hours a day for the past year, according to his mother. When his parents ran onto the stage to hug him, he felt overwhelmed, Dev said in a post-match interview.

“It gave me the assurance that I would never give up, no matter what,” he said Thursday night.

A fan of Roger Federer and the movie ‘La La Land’, Dev had participated in previous national spelling bees, taking 76th place in 2021 and 51st place in 2019. In 2022 he did not come out of the regional competition in his home state. The lone Floridian in the final, Dev, from Largo, outside St. Petersburg, gave the state its first winner since 1999.

Since he’s in eighth grade, this was his last year to compete, and he beat dictionary beasts like “chiromancy,” “schistorrhachis,” and “aegagrus.”

The competition has become more difficult over the past two years as organizers added new rules to challenge the spellers and avoid a repeat of 2019, which ended with an eight-way tie after four hours, extending the list of challenging words of the bee was exhausted. .

In 2021, the organizers introduced a vocabulary round, in which spellers must identify the correct meaning of the word. Last year they introduced the spell-off, an intense showdown where the remaining spellers have 90 seconds to spell as many words correctly as possible. Harini Logan, an eighth grader from San Antonio, won by spelling 21 words correctly.

The 2023 final started with 11 players, the youngest of them being Sarah Fernandes, an 11-year-old from Omaha. More than half were eighth graders and seasoned competitors by bee standards, representing a huge portion of the United States.

Despite their experience, there were some expected stumbling blocks.

The schwa — the “uh”-like sound that can be represented by any vowel in the English alphabet, also known as the bane of competitive spellers’ existence — knocked out several finalists, as it routinely does.

It eliminated Pranav Anandh in the ninth round, when he substituted an “i” for the first “e” in “querken”. In the 12th round, the treacherous schwa claimed two victims: Vikrant Chintanaboina (“pataca”, which he misspelled as “petaca”) and Aryan Khedkar (“pharetrone”, whom he misspelled as “pharotrone”).

The final three players were Charlotte, who tied for 32nd last year, and Surya Kapu, a 14-year-old eighth grader from Salt Lake City, who tied for fifth in 2022.

Surya fell into “kelep,” the word for a stinging ant from Central America, denying Utah its first national title and leaving Charlotte and Dev in the final high-stakes game.

He went first and correctly spelled “bathypitotmeter,” an instrument that measures the speed and temperature of water at certain depths.

Charlotte understood the word “daviely,” which means lethargic.

“Oh my god,” she said as she struggled, misspelling it DAVIELICK. Mary Brooks, the chief judge, rang the doorbell and gave Dev a chance to avoid the spell.

When Jacques A. Bailly, the bee’s pronouncer, presented psammophile, Dev said he recognized the two roots immediately, despite never having heard it before.

Deval Shah, Dev’s father, said that once his son “got rolling, he would be unbeatable”, adding that the words would unfold like “a slow stream, like a symphony is in progress”.

Mr. Shah first noticed Dev’s “remarkable memory” when he was 3 years old and became fascinated with a geography program on an iPad. His parents eventually turned that curiosity into spelling, with Mr. Shah as his first coach.

Scott Remer, his current coach, said it was clear that Dev felt strongly about his ability to spell the word Dr. Bailly threw at him.

“He has an ample memory, a real love of language and he was resilient,” he said. “I couldn’t be prouder.”

On Friday, runner-up Charlotte described how nervous she was for the final.

“I felt like I didn’t really deserve to be there,” she said. “But by finishing second I was able to prove to myself that I deserved it and that I had to rely on my own skills.”

With his two biggest stressors – high school and the spelling bee – behind him, Dev looked forward to going home next week and doing “normal things” with his friends. For now, he let the drop of confetti settle for a while.

“Ultimately, it’s your word,” he said. “It’s not like a football team. If the other team is better than your team, it will affect how the game goes. When it comes to spelling, it only matters which word you get and whether you can keep it up long enough.”