US Spelling Bee Runs Out Of Words After Marathon Duel Between Indo- American Boy and Girl

CHICAGO – A spelling beecompetition in the US has beentied between a 13-year-old Indo-American boy and a 11-year-oldgirl after they duelled for 66rounds until finally the judgesran out of words.Kush Sharma, a seventhgraderat Frontier School of Innovation,and Sophia Hoffman,a fifth-grader at Highland ParkElementary, battled in Missouricounty’s annual spelling beecompetition with both of themgetting every word right.Finally, the judges ran out ofwords and the contest betweenthem will resume on March 8 fora spot in the Scripps NationalSpelling Bee in Washington.“We did not want to just gothrough the dictionary and givethem more words. We fearedthat someone would get a wordthat was too easy while the otherwould get an extremely difficultword,” said Mary Olive Thompson,outreach coordinator forKansas City Public Librarywhere the event was held.“We wanted to be a bit morecalculated and neutral, and wewanted to give each an equal opportunity,”she was quoted assaying by CNN.The original pool of 25 studentswas quickly whittled to justSophia and Kush on Saturday.The programme provides alist of words for contests acrossthe country. Sophia and Kushburned through that list, aswell as 20 other words organiserspicked from the dictionarywhen they realised it was possiblethey might need more words,Thompson said.“The officials were fatigued.The kids weren’t tired. They hadendless energy and were doingan amazing job,” Thompsonsaid. Kush cannot rememberexactly what word was the hardestfor him to spell – somethingFrench that started with an “R”.He told CNN he will workhard for the rematch and wouldstudy every free minute of theday if he scores a place in the nationalbee.“I’m looking forward to seeinghow far Sophia can push meand how far my skills can go,” hesaid. For Sophia, the most difficultword was ‘schadenfreude’,which describes the enjoymentone can get from someone else’sbad luck. She knows how to spellthe word, but she apparentlydoes not feel it.“Kush worked really hard.I wish we could both go (to thenational competition),” Sophiasaid.