The German curse has turned into a German blessing,” exclaimed 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali from New York as he tackled a German-derived word with ease this time round and walked away with the US's hugely-popular Scripps National Spelling Bee.
In his last two outings, Arvind had finished third, with German-derived words tripping him up on both occasions. But on Thursday night, he had his way as he correctly spelled “knaidel”, a German-derived Yiddish word for a mass of leavened dough.
With that winning word, Arvind had the better off fellow Indian-American finalist, Pranav Sivakumar from Tower lakes, Illinois, who finished second after his failure to get the word “cyanophycean” right.
As in recent years, Indian-American children continued their domination of this competition, claiming the top three spots. The boy to finish third was Sriram Hathwar from New York. Seven of the 11 finalists happened to be children of Indian origin from across the US. And the youngest contestant of the season was eight-year-old Tara Singh.
Arvind's victory happens to be the sixth straight win for Indians kids at the Spelling Bee. Beginning with Nupur lala in 1999, Indian children have won 11 of the 15 crowns.
In all, 281 contestants featured in the final stage of the bee. This time round, competitors were subjected to a vocabulary test as well. Two multiple-choice vocabulary tests -- one in the preliminaries and one in the semifinals -- were administered separately. In the finals, however, the competition was restricted to testing the spelling prowess.
Son of an IT consultant father and a physician mother, Arvind takes homes $30,000 in cash and prizes, besides the engraved Scripps trophy. He also received $2,500 savings bond from Merriam-Webster and a complete reference library -- and $2,000 worth of reference books from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Arvind's family is originally from Hyderabad. "At home, my dad used to chant Telugu poems from forward to backward and backward to forward, that kind of thing. So language affinity, we value language a lot. And I love language, I love English," he remarked.
An eighth-grader, Arvind is an aspiring physicist who admires Albert Einstein. Now that he has retired from the Spelling Bee on a high note, he proposes to focus on physics.