A Florida teenager was crowned the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion after he spelled “psammophile” correctly.
Dev Shah, a 14-year-old student from Largo, took home a $50,000 prize by winning the 95thScripps National Spelling Bee, a contest where 11 million students registered at different levels throughout the world.
“It’s surreal... My legs are still shaking,” he said at the competition in National Harbor, Maryland, as he held the trophy.
Dev, the son of Indian-origin immigrant parents in the US, edged out fellow eighth-grader Charlotte Walsh, also 14, who finished in second place after she misspelled “daviely”, a Scottish-rooted word for listlessly, as “daevilick”.
Eleven students, aged between 11 and 14, made it to the finals in the spelling contest after beating out a field of 220 other participants in a three-day contest that was broadcast live.
Visuals of Dev’s crowning as champion showed a hail of confetti as he stood awe-struck on stage before being joined by his parents and other family members. Runner-up Walsh gave Dev a congratulatory hug.
The resident of Largo, in Tampa Bay, first competed unsuccessfully at the national bee in 2019 and then virtually in 2021, finishing in the 51st and 76th places respectively.
His winning word, “psammophile”, means an organism that lives in sandy areas.
“Psammo meaning sand, Greek?” he asked. “Phile, meaning love, Greek?”
He then asked for the word to be used in a sentence, a stalling tactic used by competitors, and then put his hands over his face as he was declared the winner.
“I would say I was confident on the outside but inside I was nervous, especially for my winning word – well, like, before. Not during,” he told the Associated Press.
Dev spelled the words “schistorrhachis”, “aegagrus”, “rommack” and “tolsester” in the final round on Thursday.
He is the 22nd champion with south Asian heritage in the past 24 years. His father Deval Shah is a software engineer from India who immigrated to the US 29 years ago to get his master’s degree in electrical engineering.
His mother Nilam Shah said he lost about 15 pounds as he added an exercise routine to help sharpen his focus for the contest.
As a three-year-old, Dev showed an incredible recall of words, his father said.
Growing up, he spent many years participating in academic competitions staged by the North South Foundation, a non-profit that provides scholarships to children in India, his father said.
