Bruhat Soma, a The seventh-grader from Tampa, Fla., won the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee in a dramatic spelling bee — only the second to happen in the competition's long history.
According The New York Times, the 96th Scripps National Spelling Bee kicked off Tuesday with a total of 245 contestants from all 50 states. Contestants also traveled from the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, DoD Academies in Europe, the Bahamas, Canada and Ghana.
In six spelling rounds and three vocabulary rounds that asked contestants multiple-choice questions, eight finalists emerged Friday: Soma, 12; Rishabh Saha, 14, of Merced, Calif.; Shrey Parikh, 12, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; Aditi Muthukumar, 13, of Northglenn, Colo.; YY Liang, 12, of New Windsor, NY; Ananya Rao Prassanna, 13, of Cary, NC; Faizan Zaki, 12, of Plano, Texas; and Kirsten Tiffany Santos, 13, of Katy, Texas.
Soma first competed in the national bee as a fifth grader in 2022, where he tied for 163rd place, per The timesand the following year he tied for 74th place before emerging victorious in this year's competition.
In a showdown with Zaki, the two were given 90 seconds to spell as many of the announced words as possible. Although Zaki collected an impressive total of 20 words, Soma took the win with 29 words.
To celebrate Soma's victory, confetti fell from the ceiling as he beamed and lifted the trophy aloft. “That's the best part,” he said he said at a press conference. “I never expected this.”
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