Indian-American student wins spelling bee contest

New York, March 9: A 13-year old Indian-American boy has emerged as the winner of a spelling bee contest in the US in an epic verbal duel that lasted a total of 95 rounds.

Kush Sharma, a seventh-grader at Frontier School of Innovation County, won the Spelling Bee at the Central Library in Kansas City in Missouri Saturday and secured a berth in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington scheduled for May, The Kanas City Star reported.

Sharma’s opponent in the last round was Sophia Hoffman, an 11-year-old student of Lee’s Summit School.

The two played 75 rounds alone, spread over two weeks, after everyone else long fell out of the competition.

On Feb 22, the competition was suspended when the judges ran out of words.

Coming back on Saturday to pick up their marathon bout, Sophia, 11, misspelled her word – “stifling” – and lost the game.