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Faizan Zaki overcomes a shocking, self-inflicted flub and wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee
Ben Nuckols, AP (5/30/25)

Not what you would expect when the stakes are so high:

The favorite entering the bee after his runner-up finish last year — during which he never misspelled a word in a conventional spelling round, only to lose a lightning-round tiebreaker that he didn’t practice for — the shaggy-haired Faizan wore the burden of expectations lightly, sauntering to the microphone in a black hoodie and spelling his words with casual glee.

Here's what happened:

Throughout Thursday night’s finals, the 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, looked like a champion in waiting. Then he nearly threw it away. But even a shocking moment of overconfidence couldn’t prevent him from seizing the title of best speller in the English language.

With the bee down to three spellers, Sarvadnya Kadam and Sarv Dharavane missed their words back-to-back, putting Faizan two words away from victory. The first was “commelina,” but instead of asking the requisite questions — definition, language of origin — to make sure he knew it, Faizan let his showman’s instincts take over.

“K-A-M,” he said, then stopped himself. “OK, let me do this. Oh, shoot!”

Unbelievably, he told head judge Mary Brooks, "Just ring the bell," which she did.

“So now you know what happens,” Brooks said, and the other two spellers returned to the stage.

Later, standing next to the trophy with confetti at his feet, Faizan said: “I’m definitely going to be having nightmares about that tonight.”

Even pronouncer Jacques Bailly tried to slow Faizan down before his winning word, “eclaircissement,” but Faizan didn’t ask a single question before spelling it correctly, and he pumped his fists and collapsed to the stage after saying the final letter.

The bee celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, and Faizan may be the first champion who’s remembered more for a word he got wrong than one he got right.

“I think he cared too much about his aura,” said Bruhat Soma, Faizan’s buddy who beat him in the “spell-off” tiebreaker last year.

…

Although Bruhat was fast last year when he needed to be, he followed the familiar playbook for champion spellers: asking thorough questions, spelling slowly and metronomically, showing little emotion. Those are among the hallmarks of well-coached spellers, and Faizan had three coaches: Scott Remer, Sam Evans and Sohum Sukhantankar.

None of them could turn Faizan into a robot on stage.

“He’s crazy. He’s having a good time, and he’s doing what he loves, which is spelling,” Evans said.

Viewed from a larger perspective, this year's bee was a thrilling centennial:

After last year’s bee had little drama before an abrupt move to the spell-off, Scripps tweaked the competition rules, giving judges more leeway to let the competition play out before going to the tiebreaker. The nine finalists delivered.

During one stretch, six spellers got 26 consecutive words right, and there were three perfect rounds during the finals. The last time there was a single perfect round was the infamous 2019 bee, which ended in an eight-way tie.

An interesting coincidence, at least for me, was that the third-place finalist was named Sarva and the runner-up was Sarvadnya ("omniscient" in Marathi), both having the common element "sarva" — which means "all" — in their names.  This may be a reflection of the early aspiration of their parents for them to know all the words in the dictionary.

Including Faizan, whose parents emigrated from southern India, 30 of the past 36 champions have been Indian American, a run that began with Nupur Lala’s victory in 1999, which was later featured in the documentary “Spellbound.” In honor of the centennial, dozens of past champions attended this year and signed autographs for spellers, families and bee fans.

We have speculated on this striking phenomenon many times in the past, but have never come to a conclusion that convinces everyone.  One thing I will say this time is that the hard evidence of such an overwhelming preponderance of Indian finalists and champions tells us that there must be some reason(s) why this is so.

Selected readings           

• "It is that time of the year again" (6/3/24) — with lengthy bibliography
• "Spelling and intuition" (11/30/23)
• "Spelling bee 2022 — back on track" (6/4/22)
• "Spelling bee 2021 – Indian streak broken!" (7/9/21)
• "What happened to the spelling bee this year?" (10/21/20)
• "Spelling Bee 2019" (5/31/10)
• "The worldly sport of spelling" (6/2/18)
• “Spelling bee champs” (6/1/14)
• “Spelling bees and character amnesia” (8/7/13)
• “Brain imaging and spelling champions” (8/7/15)
• “Spoken Sanskrit” (1/9/16)
• "Once more on the mystery of the national spelling bee" (5/27/16)
• "Spelling bees in the 1940s" (7/10/16)
• "Yet again on the mystery of the national spelling bee" (6/5/17)
• "Dog bites man: Indian wins spelling bee" (6/3/23)

[Thanks to Ben Zimmer]

June 7, 2025 @ 5:14 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Contests, Spelling

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