Faizan Zaki Wins 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee After Coming in Second in 2024
Faizan Zaki is the 2025 champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition.
The winner, 13, will receive $50,000 in cash from Scripps, $2,500 cash prize and reference library from Merriam-Webster and $400 worth of reference works from Encyclopædia Britannica, according to Scripps.
Zaki, of Plano, Texas, was last year's runner-up. He won this year's competition during the 11th round of the finals with the word "éclaircissement," per The New York Times.
The word means "a clearing up of something obscure," per Merriam-Webster.
This year's rigorous competition featured 243 bright students from across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Department of Defense Schools in Europe. Students from the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria also competed to represent their country.
The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee also marked its 100th year of spelling competitions. Students and their families visited the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland for Bee Week where the centennial competition was held.
Participants competed in four separate segments for the coveted Scripps Cup that included the Preliminaries, Quarterfinals, Semifinals and Finals. The competition broadcasted on ION began May 27 with the final round airing May 29.
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Related: Photos of Former National Spelling Bee Champions (and the Words They Won with)
The second round of competition in each phase includes a vocabulary round that was introduced in 2021 to promote 'knowledge and literacy' in competitors, according to the Scripps National Spelling Bee's website. The competition then ends with the historical 'spell-off.'
During last year's Spelling Bee competition 12-year-old Bruhat Soma was named the national champion after correctly spelling 29 words in a 90-second tiebreaker.
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The seventh grader from St. Petersburg, Fla., faced off with Zaki in a lightning tiebreaker round for competing in a conventional round.
Soma's winning word was "abseil," meaning "a descent in mountaineering by means of a rope looped over a projection above," the Scripps organization announced.
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