Faizan Zaki overcomes self-inflicted flub and wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee

Globe and Mail

a day ago

Faizan Zaki's enthusiasm for spelling nearly got the better of him. Ultimately, his joyful approach made him the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.
The favourite entering the bee after his runner-up finish last year – during which he never misspelled a word in a conventional spelling round, only to lose a lightning-round tiebreaker that he didn't practice for – the shaggy-haired Faizan wore the burden of expectations lightly, sauntering to the microphone in a black hoodie and spelling his words with casual glee.
Throughout Thursday night's finals, the 13-year-old from Allen, Tex., looked like a champion in waiting. Then he nearly threw it away. But even a shocking moment of overconfidence couldn't prevent him from seizing the title of best speller in the English language.
With the bee down to three spellers, Sarvadnya Kadam and Sarv Dharavane missed their words back-to-back, putting Faizan two words away from victory. The first was 'commelina,' but instead of asking the requisite questions – definition, language of origin – to make sure he knew it, Faizan let his showman's instincts take over.
'K-A-M,' he said, then stopped himself. 'OK, let me do this. Oh, shoot!'
'Just ring the bell,' he told head judge Mary Brooks, who obliged.
'So now you know what happens,' Brooks said, and the other two spellers returned to the stage.
Later, standing next to the trophy with confetti at his feet, Faizan said: 'I'm definitely going to be having nightmares about that tonight.'
Even pronouncer Jacques Bailly tried to slow Faizan down before his winning word, 'eclaircissement,' but Faizan didn't ask a single question before spelling it correctly, and he pumped his fists and collapsed to the stage after saying the final letter.
The bee celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, and Faizan may be the first champion who's remembered more for a word he got wrong than one he got right.
'I think he cared too much about his aura,' said Bruhat Soma, Faizan's buddy who beat him in the 'spell-off' tiebreaker last year.
Faizan had a more nuanced explanation: After not preparing for the spell-off last year, he overcorrected, emphasizing speed during his study sessions.
Although Bruhat was fast last year when he needed to be, he followed the familiar playbook for champion spellers: asking thorough questions, spelling slowly and metronomically, showing little emotion. Those are among the hallmarks of well-coached spellers, and Faizan had three coaches: Scott Remer, Sam Evans and Sohum Sukhantankar.
None of them could turn Faizan into a robot on stage.
'He's crazy. He's having a good time, and he's doing what he loves, which is spelling,' Evans said.
After last year's bee had little drama before an abrupt move to the spell-off, Scripps tweaked the competition rules, giving judges more leeway to let the competition play out before going to the tiebreaker. The nine finalists delivered.
During one stretch, six spellers got 28 consecutive words right, and there were three perfect rounds during the finals. The last time there was a single perfect round was the infamous 2019 bee, which ended in an eight-way tie.
Sarv, an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, who ultimately finished third, would have been the youngest champion since Nihar Janga in 2016. He has three years of eligibility remaining.
The most poised and mature of the final three, Sarvadnya – who's from Visalia, California – ends his career as the runner-up. He's 14 and in the eighth grade, which means he has aged out of the competition. It's not a bad way to go out, considering that Faizan became just the fifth runner-up in a century to come back and win, and the first since Sean Conley in 2001.
Including Faizan, whose parents emigrated from southern India, 30 of the past 36 champions have been Indian American, a run that began with Nupur Lala's victory in 1999, which was later featured in the documentary 'Spellbound.' Lala was among the dozens of past champions who attended this year and signed autographs for spellers, families and bee fans to honour the anniversary.
With the winner's haul of $52,500 added to his second-place prize of $25,000, Faizan increased his bee earnings to $77,500. His big splurge with his winnings last year? A $1,500 Rubik's cube with 21 squares on each side. This time, he said he'd donate a large portion of his winnings to charity.