Representative image IANS
An Indian-origin girl has won the US Harini
The runner up was Vikram
Of the 14 finalists who survived three days of gruelling contests in
Logan, who is 14, is a class 8 student at a
Children of Indian origin have dominated the contest, which tests not only the rote memorisation of spellings but also the knowledge of the origin of words and their structure and usage.
Since
They monopolised it from 2008 to 2018, but in 2019 a non-Indian girl was among the eight co-winners. The other seven were of Indian origin.
There was no contest in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic and an African-American girl won when it resumed last year.
The final elimination round this year had the children select the correct meaning of words from a list of choices, rather than just spell words.
Logan was initially knocked out in this round but was reinstated when the judges ruled that her answer was also correct.
She and Raju duelled for several rounds in which both either mis-spelt the words or got them right.
To break the deadlock they went into a "spell-off" in which they had to rapidly spell correctly as many words as possible within 90 seconds.
Logan defeated Raju by spelling 21 words correctly to his 15.
The
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis)