Ananya Vinay of Fresno, California, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, taking home a $40,000 cash prize after 12 hours of picking her way along a precarious lifeline of consonants and vowels.
Vinay, 12, correctly spelled the word marocain – a dress fabric made of warp of silk or rayon and a filling of other yarns – to win the spelling bee held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in suburban Washington.
She said she felt "amazing" after defeating Rohan Rajeev, 14, of Edmond Oklahoma during the stirring 25-word championship round.
"She had a deep passion for reading. The biggest thing that she wants to do is sit and read," her father Vinay Sreekumar said.
Competitors aged 6 to 15 emerged from early spelling bees involving more than 11 million youth from all 50 US states, US territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several countries, from Jamaica to Japan.
"What?!" exclaimed Maggie Sheridan, 13, from Mansfield, Ohio, throwing her hands up in disbelief when she learned she correctly spelled whirlicote, a type of luxurious carriage, with one second to spare.
Marlene Schaff, 14, was ousted by misspelling cleidoic, which means to be enclosed in a relatively impervious shell, like an egg.
New rules this year are aimed at preventing tie endings like last year's, when two joint winners both got $40,000 cash prizes.
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