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CTV News
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Faizan Zaki overcomes a shocking, self-inflicted flub and wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee
Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, holds the trophy after winning the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) OXON HILL, Md. — 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 favorite 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, Texas, 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. Said Zaki Anwar, Faizan's father: 'He's the GOAT. I actually believe that. He's really good, man. He's been doing it for so long, and he knows the dictionary in and out.' A thrilling centennial 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 26 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.' In honor of the centennial, dozens of past champions attended this year and signed autographs for spellers, families and bee fans. 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. The bee began in 1925 when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington. For the past 14 years, Scripps has hosted the competition at a convention center just outside the nation's capital, but the bee returns downtown next year to Constitution Hall, a nearly century-old concert venue near the White House. A passionate champion Faizan has been spelling for more than half his life. He competed in the 2019 bee as a 7-year-old, getting in through a wild-card program that has since been discontinued. He qualified again in 2023 and made the semifinals before last year's second-place finish. 'One thing that differentiates him is he really has a passion for this. In his free time, when he's not studying for the bee, he's literally looking up archaic, obsolete words that have no chance of being asked,' Bruhat said. 'I don't think he cares as much about the title as his passion for language and words.' Faizan had no regrets about showing that enthusiasm, even though it nearly cost him. 'No offense to Bruhat, but I think he really took the bee a little too seriously,' Faizan said. 'I decided to have fun with this bee, and I did well, and here I am.' ___ The story has been updated to correct the number of consecutive words spelled correctly by six spellers to 26, from 28, and to remove a reference to Nupur Lala being among the past champions who attended. ___ Written by Ben Nuckols, The Associated Press Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012.
CNN
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Faizan Zaki wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee a year after finishing runner-up
FacebookTweetLink Follow Oxon Hill, Maryland (AP) – Faizan Zaki nearly threw away his opportunity to go from runner-up to champion at the Scripps National Spelling Bee with a shocking moment of overconfidence. Given a second chance, he seized the title of best speller in the English language. The 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, who lost in a lightning-round tiebreaker last year, outlasted eight other accomplished spellers to win the title on Thursday night, including two that he let back into the competition after his own careless flub. Told to take a deep breath before his final word, 'eclaircissement,' he 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. Two rounds earlier, Sarvadnya Kadam and Sarv Dharavane misspelled their words, clearing a path for Faizan, but instead of making sure he knew the word, 'commelina,' Faizan let his showmanship get the better of him. '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. Upon his return to the microphone, Sarv chimed in: 'This is surprising!' But Sarv misspelled again, followed in the next round by Sarvadnya, and Faizan stayed just calm enough to ensure his competitors wouldn't get back to the microphone. It was a riveting conclusion to a competition that started in 1925 and appears to have a bright future. Scripps, a Cincinnati-based media company, had a few dozen former champions on hand to celebrate the centennial of an event that began when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington. Faizan lost to Bruhat Soma last year in a tiebreaker known as a 'spell-off.' He became only the fifth runner-up to come back and win and the first since since Sean Conley in 2001. 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 is the last year the bee will be held at its home for the past 14 years, a convention center just outside Washington on the banks of the Potomac River. In 2026, the competition returns to the nation's capital at Constitution Hall, a nearly century-old concert venue near the White House.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Faizan Zaki wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee a year after finishing runner-up
OXON HILL, Md. — Faizan Zaki nearly threw away his opportunity to go from runner-up to champion at the Scripps National Spelling Bee with a shocking moment of overconfidence. Given a second chance, he seized the title of best speller in the English language. The 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, who lost in a lightning-round tiebreaker last year, outlasted eight other accomplished spellers to win the title on Thursday night, including two that he let back into the competition after his own careless flub.
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Faizan Zaki wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee a year after finishing runner-up
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Faizan Zaki nearly threw away his opportunity to go from runner-up to champion at the Scripps National Spelling Bee with a shocking moment of overconfidence. Given a second chance, he seized the title of best speller in the English language. The 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, who lost in a lightning-round tiebreaker last year, outlasted eight other accomplished spellers to win the title on Thursday night, including two that he let back into the competition after his own careless flub. Told to take a deep breath before his final word, 'eclaircissement,' he 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.
Associated Press
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
National Spelling Bee runners-up rarely go on to win. But Faizan Zaki hopes to defy the odds
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — With the benefit of hindsight, Vikram Raju knows there was almost no chance he would win after being a runner-up in the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee. 'The chances of getting that high are infinitesimally small, and the chances of doing it again are an order of magnitude smaller, obviously,' Vikram said Wednesday. 'So it's a really daunting feeling as well because you always try to outdo yourself from the previous year.' Don't tell Faizan Zaki those odds. Faizan, who lost to Bruhat Soma in a 'spell-off' tiebreaker last year, was the only speller to earn a perfect score on the written spelling and vocabulary test that determined this year's quarterfinalists. Then he breezed through seven rounds on Wednesday to become one of nine spellers who will compete in Thursday night's finals for a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. And he's done it all with insouciant flair, sauntering to the microphone in a black hoodie, shaggy hair in his face. Once he's sure of the word, he takes his hands out of his sweatshirt pouch and matter-of-factly says each letter while he mimics typing in the air. The 13-year-old seventh-grader from Allen, Texas, finally showed a bit of vulnerability on 'coterell,' the word that got him to the finals, and he celebrated with a big fist pump after racing through its eight letters. 'It was just very relieving. I have a lot of expectations put on me, so I'm just excited that I'm going to the finals again,' Faizan said. No matter how often he flexes his knowledge of roots and unfamiliar language patterns, historical trends suggest Faizan is an underdog. In 96 bees over 100 years, only four runners-up have later gone on to win, and just one did so in the last 44 years: Sean Conley, the 2001 champion who finished second the year before. 'Hopefully I can get it done,' Faizan said. 'Especially back home, all of my friends, they tell me that I need to win this year.' Other runners-up Disappointment has taken many forms for recent runners-up. Naysa Modi, who finished second in 2018, was eliminated in 2019 by a written test that winnowed the field to 50 spellers, only to watch in dismay as the bee declared eight co-champions who aced words that she also knew. Simone Kaplan, the runner-up to those 2019 'octo-champs,' didn't get a chance to come back because the 2020 bee was canceled due to COVID-19. Chaitra Thummala, runner-up to Zaila Avant-garde in 2021, never contended again, even though she had two more years before she aged out of the competition. Spellers can't be older than 15 or past the eighth grade. Then came Vikram, who didn't make it back in 2023 after a regional bee in Denver that lasted 53 rounds over a span of more than five hours. Vikram and his parents unsuccessfully appealed to Scripps that he misspelled because the bee's pronouncer made one of several mistakes. Now 15, Vikram returned to the bee to support his younger brother, Ved — who bowed out in the semifinals — and he's long past any bitter feelings about how his spelling career ended. 'Even if you know every single word in the dictionary, there are just factors that are completely out of your control,' Vikram said. 'The nerves might get too big someday. Maybe the audience is distracting you in that one moment. Maybe your tongue slips. Maybe you get too excited.' 'I don't want to say that luck is the most important factor, but it's a huge factor in this competition,' he continued. Youth and experience Jacques Bailly has been the bee's lead pronouncer for 22 years, or nearly three times as long as this year's youngest speller has been alive. Yet meeting Bailly was the highlight of a precocious bee debut for Zachary Teoh, an 8-year-old second-grader from Houston. 'We got to read the dictionary together!' Zachary exclaimed. Zachary was better than half the field in his bee debut. Out of 243 spellers, his official placement was a tie for 74th place after he bowed out on a vocabulary word — 'manifold' — during the quarterfinals. He said he felt like it was among the more difficult vocabulary questions, and he knew how to spell the word even though he couldn't define it. If Zachary somehow makes it back to the bee in each of his six remaining years of eligibility, he would break the record of six appearances held by Akash Vukoti, who debuted in 2016 at age 6 and spelled his final word in 2023. Zachary wore a green tartan cardigan that he said has been his lucky garment since kindergarten. It's getting a bit snug. 'If they give me a new one,' he said, referring to his proud parents, 'I can wear both.' ___ Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.
