Washington — Shri Parikh felt his body shake with tension and doubt every time he walked to the microphone at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the final test of a six-year competitive spelling career marked by triumph and heartbreak that he knew could end at any moment.
Then he listened to Jack Bailey pronounce, his harsh body language disappearing as he nodded vigorously, telling him that, yes, he knew the words he had been asked to spell. All of them.
“Once I get the word, I’m not really nervous anymore, because then everything is under my control,” Shari said.
Shri arrived as favourite He walked away as National Spelling Bee champion on Thursday night, besting a deep and experienced group of finalists and beating Ishaan Gupta in a quick tiebreaker that seemed to be over as soon as Shrey raced through his first word.
His final tally: 32 correctly spelled words in 90 seconds, a record for a finish in a penalty shootout style that was used for the first time in 2022.
“I was counting and I said, ‘Okay, that’s more than 30,'” said Shree’s mother, Khyati Mehta. “And at that point, I’m like, ‘I think this is it.'”
Ishaan struggled bravely, getting 25 words correct during his spellings, but he was more deliberate and hesitant from the start. The competitors stood next to each other as Scripps officials announced what everyone in the lively crowd in Constitution Hall already knew, and Sherri turned and shook Ishaan’s hand.
After Sarv Dharavan dropped out in third place for the second year in a row, Shree and Ishaan had just one traditional round before the spell bell went on stage. Ishaan was escorted away — the tiebreaker is the only time the spellers get the same words — and Shree faced a final bout of tension when he stood there for five minutes while the crew tried, and failed, to fix a technical glitch in the bell.
“That was really scary for me,” he said.
The spell moves so fast that it’s impossible to know which word warrants the title, but Scripps later declared “bromocriptine”—a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics the activity of dopamine—as the winner. Sheree could get a dopamine hit from the winner’s $52,500 cash prize, a custom trophy and a prize pool.
He became champion number 31 out of 37 champions Indian heritagea tour that began with Nupur Lala’s victory in 1999.
Sheri, a 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, took an unusual route to the title. He finished third in 2024, but missed out last year. He missed his regional bee, too — because, because of a fever-causing virus, he misspelled the word “caliper” and withdrew from a competition that any talented speller would consider child’s play: the Day Creek Middle School spelling bee.
“Right now, I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m so happy and relieved, and just a flood of emotions,” Shree said. “At my school last year, I was very depressed and very upset. It didn’t even settle down the next day. I had a really hard time, but I’m glad I was able to recover.”
After a few months off, he rededicated himself, seeking every advantage he could find through training and study guides. Facing many of the same spellers he faced this week in Washington, he won again and again.
“Whenever I asked him, he would notice his missed words,” said Sohum Sukhatankar, the 2019 co-champion who trained Shri along with Sam Evans and Vijaya Ganesh. “He would analyze his every missed word and try to find out why he missed it.” “In all the time I coached him, he never missed a word twice.”
Evans, who has worked with all three former champions, said Sherri’s work ethic was outstanding.
“I’ve never seen anyone put that much effort into spelling bees, into learning everything they can learn,” Evans said. “My evil is relentless.”
This spell will not be very popular among beekeepers who prefer to see the last two contestants go head-to-head in as many rounds as it takes. Because it focuses on speed and memorization, it lacks the thrill of watching a speller work out the intricacies of a difficult word using strange patterns of vowels or tricky double consonants.
“It is a perversion of many of the values that I and many people in the spelling community hold dear,” said Navneth Murali, who competed through 2020 and now works as a coach. “I think everyone would have liked to see a duel, but it seems like this one is here to stay. It’s something we’ll have to adapt to.”
A strong and experienced group of nine finalists demonstrated their skills by getting 18 for 18 at the start, and passing the first spelling and vocabulary rounds. Aiden Meng ended this streak when he was tripped by a ‘catometope’ to start the second spell round.
Then the audience gasped as the bell rang for two they thought could win it all: Oliver Halkett for “Faesulae” and Zwe Spacetime for “vaesite,” words with a tricky mix of origins and vowel sounds.
Oliver and Zoe are eighth graders, which means they are now out of the competition. Sarv, a 12-year-old sixth grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, has two years of eligibility to try to repeat Shree’s feat of moving from third to first. Ishaan, a 12-year-old seventh grader from Jersey City, New Jersey, can try again next year as well.
The bee moves from the suburban convention center to Constitution Hall It was a point of contention To the satirists and their families because of the inconvenience caused. But Thursday’s finals featured a more lively atmosphere, with more intimate seating and better sightlines bringing the audience closer to the action, and the broadcast was replayed with… Hosted by ESPN’s Mina Kemmis Along with longtime analyst Paul Loeffler.
Although the manner in which Scripps determined the champion will be debated – and Schrey did not even receive the usual shower of winner’s confetti – there was no doubt that he was deserving.
“When it comes to competition, he goes all the way,” his father Gaurav Parikh said.
Or as Evans said: “He’s got this dog inside him.”
___
Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.