After nine rounds Thursday night, the Scripps National Spelling Bee came down to a showdown between a West Coaster and an East Coaster, an eighth grader and a seventh grader.
Shrey Parikh, 14, from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., zipped through a barrage of words in a thrilling spell-off, correctly spelling 32 words in 90 seconds to beat Ishaan Gupta, 12, from Jersey City, N.J., who spelled 25 words correctly.
As an eighth grader, Shrey was in his final year of bee eligibility, and with speed and agility he deftly spelled words like “melengket” and “rapakivi” to win $50,000 and the Scripps Cup.
Here are some takeaways from the spelling bee:
The spell-off returned and didn’t disappoint.
After the ninth round Thursday — after Shrey spelled “Philepitta” and Ishaan spelled “Ertebolle” — the judges declared a spell-off, the third since organizers introduced the round in 2021 to avoid having multiple winners.
In a spell-off, a contestant stands at a podium and for 90 seconds must correctly spell as many words as possible. At the same time, the opponent is in another room, wearing headphones and unable to hear the words. Both spellers are read the same words in the same order.
Before the spell-off was introduced, the bee could stretch late into the night, dragging on as skilled spellers refused to go down. Sometimes, it led to multiple winners. Most memorably, eight contestants shared the trophy in 2019.
On Thursday night, the spell-off revealed Shrey as the more prepared speller.
He went first, taking several deep breaths and looking intently at Jacques Bailly, the bee’s official pronouncer. After Shrey finished with “bromocriptine,” he walked away from the podium, clapped, put his hands in his pockets and nodded confidently.
He had spelled 35 words — 32, a spell-off record, were correct.
Round 3 was brutal.
Round 3 took out four spellers, reducing the number of contestants to five.
Aiden Meng, a seventh grader from Danville, Calif., was the first to go on the word “catometope,” defined as any crab of a division of crabs comprising the grapsoid members of Brachyrhyncha. He spelled it C-A-T-A-M-E-T-O-P-E.
Oliver Halkett, a 14-year-old eighth grader from Los Angeles, followed. He seemed worried when he stepped to the mic, and Dr. Bailly, the official pronouncer, asked him how he was feeling.
“We’ll see,” Oliver said, looking grim.
He was eliminated on “Faesulae,” the word for an ancient commune in central Italy, northeast of Florence.
Avishka Dudala, a 13-year-old eighth grader, was done in by the schwa, the lazy, “uh”-like sound in a word that can be represented by any vowel in the English alphabet. She misspelled “oconee bells,” which are stemless perennial herbs that have crenate-dentate glossy leaves. Avishka spelled it “aconae bells.”
Also lost in round 3 was another eighth grader, Zwe Spacetime, 14. As his sister, the 2021 winner Zaila Avant-garde, looked on with concern, he misspelled “vaesite,” a mineral “consisting of sulfide of nickel and belonging to the pyrite group,” according to Merriam-Webster.
He seemed to take the loss well, smiling and waving at his fellow contestants as he strode off the stage.
A finalist becomes an audience favorite.
Logan Bailey, a sixth grader from Houston, did not claim the coveted trophy, but he easily won over the crowd at D.A.R. Constitution Hall.
He yelled “no way,” grabbed his head and high-fived the contestants after each time he correctly spelled a word.
“That was fun!” Logan said, beaming after Dr. Bailly referred to “KPop Demon Hunters” to use “Quincke tube” in a sentence.
But it was that word, meaning a glass tube that sounds like a bottle when blown across its mouth, that confounded Logan.
He seemed to know he was done for before he even began his attempt.
“No! No! No! No!” he wailed when Dr. Bailly first pronounced the word.
When the head judge, Mary Brooks, rang the bell, the audience gasped and groaned.
Paul Loeffler, the bee’s longtime broadcaster, said viewers at home were probably crying when the bell rang.
“The emotions that that young speller produced in this room, I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said.
The host, Mina Kimes, agreed with Mr. Loeffler.
“So sad to lose Logan,” she said.
Mary Brooks remains the champion comforter.
Ms. Brooks has a tough job: dinging the bell that tells contestants they are out.
At the start of the competition, she said she was dreading having to do it.
“I don’t want to ring the bell tonight, because I love all nine of these finalists,” Ms. Brooks said.
The ding is ruthless, but Ms. Brooks always follows up with words meant to comfort the eliminated speller. On Thursday night, she continued that practice.
“What an amazing two years you’ve had,” she told Avishka, the eighth grader tripped up by the schwa.
She reminded Sarv Dharavane, a sixth grader from Tucker, Ga., that he had plenty of time to come back.
“You’re not done,” she said. “We know that.”
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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