Indian American Teenager Reigns Supreme as US National Spelling Bee Winner
Dev Shah, a 14-year-old Indian-American student from Largo, Florida, emerged as the victor of the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday. In the 15th round of the finals, he aced the word “psammophile,” denoting an organism thriving in sandy soils.
Charlotte Walsh, also an eighth-grader at the age of 14 from Arlington, Virginia, secured second place. However, her journey came to an end in the 14th round when she misspelled “daviely,” a word with Scottish roots meaning listlessly.
Prior to that, Dev Shah, a student at Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School, had impressively and swiftly spelled “bathypitotmeter” in the 14th round. According to the spelling bee rules, he needed to conquer one more word to clinch the victory.
Amidst a celebration filled with confetti, Dev was officially crowned champion and joined on stage by his parents and relatives. As the winner, he will receive a cash prize of $50,000 from E.W. Scripps Co, the sponsor of the bee, along with additional monetary rewards and reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster. The official dictionary of the competition is the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.
Dev, whose interests include reading, tennis, playing the cello, and solving math problems, previously tied for 51st place in the 2019 edition of the spelling bee and tied for 76th place in 2021.
Out of a total field of 220 competitors participating in the three-day contest held in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., Dev was among the 11 finalists aged 11 to 14. They triumphed over the rest of the participants, comprising 94 girls, 134 boys, and two spellers who identify as nonbinary. One contestant did not specify their gender.
The bee is televised live, and the thrill is amplified by TV commentators who narrate the intense moments as contestants rack their brains to spell often-obscure words correctly.
In the previous year, Harini Logan, 14, from San Antonio, Texas, emerged victorious after correctly spelling 22 words during a 90-second spell-off. It was the first time a spell-off determined the outcome of the prestigious competition that commenced in 1925.
