12-Year-Old Indian-American Wins National Spelling Bee Contest In US

A 12-year-old Indian-American from Florida, Bruhat Soma, who studies in seventh-grade, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. He spelt 29 words correctly in the tiebreaker.

With this win, Indian-American community maintained the dominance of its children in the prestigious competition.

Bruhat earned more than $50,000 in cash and other prizes by emerging victorious in the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday.

This year’s contest came down to a tiebreaker in which Bruhat spelt 29 words correctly in 90 seconds, beating Faizan Zaki, who managed to correctly spell 20 words in the lightning round.

Bruhat’s championship word was “abseil”, which is defined as “descent in mountaineering by means of a rope looped over a projection above.”

Bruhat’s father Srinivas Soma is originally from Nalgonda in Telangana.

The 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee had eight finalists, five of whom were Indian-Americans: Rishabh Saha, 14 and Shrey Parikh, 12, from California; Aditi Muthukumar, 13, from Colorado; and Ananya Rao Prassanna, 13, from North Carolina.

Indian-American Dev Shah won 2023’s Bee by correctly. The Scripps National Spelling Bee was launched in 1925. It is a high-profile, high-pressure endurance test as much as a nerd spelling match and spellers spend months preparing for it.