Jun 2, 2022; National Harbor, MD, USA; Harini Logan, 14, is embraced by loved ones as she is given the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy after defeating Vikram Raju, 12, in the finals Thursday, June 2, 2022.. Mandatory Credit: Josh Morgan-USA TODAY
News: 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Harini Logan won the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday Night.
It was a rocky road getting to the finish line this year.
Harini was eliminated, then reinstated, during the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s much-debated multiple-choice vocabulary round. She misspelled four times as Scripps’ most challenging words proved too much for her and Vikram Raju, who also got four wrong in the closing stretch. And then she finally took down Vikram in the bee’s first-ever lightning-round tiebreaker.
The 14-year-old eighth-grader from San Antonio, Texas, who competed in the last fully in-person bee three years ago and endured the pandemic to make it back, spelled 22 words correctly during the 90-second spell-off, beating Vikram by seven. The winning word, according to Scripps, was “moorhen,” which means the female of the red grouse, because that was the one that moved her past Vikram. Judges announced at the bee that Harini’s word total was 21, but she was credited with one more after a later video review.
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