Kush Sharma, Indian-American student won spelling bee

Kush Sharma, a 13-year old Indian-American student on 9 March 2014 won the National Spelling Bee Competition in the US in a verbal duel at Kansas City Public Library, Missouri. He defeated 11-year old, fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman of Highland Park Elementary to win Missouri County’s annual bee contest that lasted for about two-weeks.

To clinch the Spelling Bee title in Missouri, Kush, the seventh-grader at Frontier School of Innovation spelled out, definition. This win has also booked his berth in the Scripps National Spelling Bee to be held in Washington in May 2014. Hoffman failed to win the contest as she misspelled the word stifling.

To claim the contest, the two spelt 260 words that included barukhzy, muumuu, hemerocallis, jacamar and schadenfreude. Before winning the contest, the duo competed for 66 rounds pushing the judges to turn a dictionary after they ran out of approved words.

To reach the final round, the two eliminated 23 other contestants. They contested against each other in 47 rounds to win the contest.

Earlier in 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee was won by Arvind Mahankali a student of New York. He correctly spelled knaidel to win the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee.