OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Comfortable-spoken however brimming with self assurance, Dev Shah requested exact questions on difficult to understand Greek roots, rushed via his second-to-last phrase and rolled to the Scripps Nationwide Spelling Bee identify Thursday evening.
Dev, a 14-year-old from Largo, Florida, had his spelling profession interrupted via the pandemic, then didn’t make it out of his regional bee final yr. He were given via his extremely aggressive regional this yr for his 3rd and ultimate check out on the nationwide identify, and he ended up conserving the trophy over his head as confetti fell.
His profitable phrase used to be “psammophile,” a layup for a speller of his caliber.
“Psammo which means sand, Greek?” he requested. “Phile, which means love, Greek?”
He soaked up the instant via soliciting for the phrase for use in a sentence, one thing he described an afternoon previous as a stalling tactic. Then he put his fingers over his face as he used to be declared the winner.
Charlotte Walsh, a 14-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, used to be the runner-up.