Florida Seventh-Grader NRI Bruhat Soma, Wins Scripps
National Spelling Bee Title

Los Angeles/May 31, 2024
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/A.Gary Singh

NRI “Bruhat Soma” confessed to feeling anxious during the waiting hours before he took the stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, especially since he hadn’t lost a spelling bee in eight months. However, he showed no signs of nerves once at the microphone. When the competition unexpectedly moved to a lightning-round tiebreaker, or "spell-off," Bruhat was completely at ease.

The 12-year-old seventh-grader from Tampa, Florida, raced through 30 words in 90 seconds on Thursday night, sounding more like an auctioneer than a spelling champion. Judges determined he spelled 29 words correctly, nine more than his competitor, Faizan Zaki. As the champion, Bruhat received a trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.

Bruhat shared that he practiced the spell-off daily for six months. "I was pretty confident that I had a chance at winning because I’ve been working so hard," he said, explaining his dedication to preparing for a tiebreaker that might not happen. "And I really wanted to win. That’s why I practiced the spell-off so much."

If he had known how the final rounds would be conducted, he might have trained even more on his speed. Although Bruhat’s victory was undisputed, the ending left many viewers feeling disappointed and confused. "I don’t think it was a good bee," said Dev Shah, last year’s champion. "It’s not about spelling as many words as you can in 90 seconds. That’s not what the spelling bee is."

The finals started with eight spellers, the fewest since 2010, as Scripps seemed to be trying to fill a two-hour broadcast slot on Ion, a network owned by the Cincinnati-based media company. Frequent, lengthy commercial breaks gave spellers time to chat with their coaches, relatives, and supporters at the side of the stage. Then, officials announced the tiebreaker before Bruhat and Faizan could compete in a conventional round.

Charlotte Walsh said: "I do wish that we would have gotten to see more of a duel between them," who finished runner-up to Dev in 2023.

Competition rules state that a spell-off is used in the interest of time, yet Scripps still squeezed in another commercial break between the tiebreaker and the announcement of Bruhat’s victory. "It felt so forced and manufactured," Dev said.

Scripps declared Bruhat’s winning word as "abseil," which means "descent in mountaineering by means of a rope looped over a projection above." In the tiebreaker -- previously used when Harini Logan won in 2022 -- the winning word is the one that gives a speller one more correct word than their competitor.

Shortly after Bruhat was showered with confetti and handed the trophy, Faizan was in tears at the side of the stage, receiving hugs from other spellers. Minutes earlier, he had embraced his friend, Shrey Parikh, after Shrey was eliminated. Faizan had confidently spelled his final word in the regular competition, breezing through "nicuri" without asking a single question and returning to his seat, reminiscent of Shourav Dasari’s dramatic spelling of "Mogollon" in 2017.

However, the 12-year-old sixth-grader from Allen, Texas, wasn’t given another chance to compete in the conventional rounds. "I definitely think they should have been given an opportunity to have some conventional spelling rounds before defaulting to the spell-off," said Scott Remer, one of Faizan’s coaches.

Before the competition, Bruhat had won the Words of Wisdom bee hosted by Remer, the SpellPundit bee organized by the study guide company, and the first-ever online bee emceed by Dev, last year’s Scripps champion. "I always want to win. And this was, like, my main goal," Bruhat said. "It didn’t matter if I won all those other bees. This is what I was aiming for. So I’m just really happy that I won this."

His last loss was in September at the WishWin senior spelling bee, where he misspelled "Gloucester," a cheese named for the city in England. Although he knew the city, he didn’t realize it was also a cheese and guessed "glaucester." "After that, I guess I just went on a winning streak," he said.

Bruhat admitted there was one word he didn’t know on Thursday night: "tennesi," a monetary unit of Turkmenistan. Ananya Prassanna correctly spelled it during the most challenging round of the bee, where every word had an unknown, obscure, or nonexistent language of origin. The 13-year-old from Apex, North Carolina, finished tied for third.

Bruhat is the second consecutive champion from the Tampa Bay area, marking the 29th Indian American champion in the past 35 years. His parents emigrated from the southern Indian state of Telangana, a region well-represented among Indian American champions and contenders since 1999, inspired by Nupur Lala’s victory that year, highlighted in the documentary "Spellbound." Now a neuro-oncologist, Lala returned to the bee this year for the first time in a decade.

Bruhat’s victory was also a proud moment for Sam Evans, a 16-year-old former speller-turned-coach who worked with three of the top four finishers, including Faizan and Shrey, both sixth-graders with two years of eligibility left. Evans marveled at Bruhat’s ability to remember any word he saw and never miss it again once he learned it.

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