A seventh grader from Tampa, Florida, is the winner of the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship.
Bruhat Soma, 12, emerged victorious on Thursday night after an intense competition that originally ended in a tie.
The championship turned out to be a nail-biter that went to a “spell off” between Soma and Faizan Zaki. Soma won by spelling 29 out of 30 words correctly in 90 seconds. It was nine words more than what Zaki, the event’s runner-up, spelled correctly.
As champion, Soma received over $50,000 in cash and prizes, along with a trophy to commemorate his victory.
After the tournament, Soma confessed to being nervous before the contest because he felt pressure to win because of his previous performances, which included not losing a spelling bee in eight months, the Associated Press reported.
“I was pretty confident that I had a chance at winning because I’ve been working so hard,” Soma said. “And I really wanted to win. That’s why I practiced the spell-off so much.”
He said he practiced doing the spell-off every day for six months.
This year’s spelling bee was slightly different for Scripps since it advanced to a tiebreaker. The rules specified that the contest winner would be the contestant who spelled the most words correctly in 90 seconds, as mentioned above. The winning word ended up being “abseil,” which means “descent in mountaineering by means of a rope looped over a projection above,” the Associated Press reported.
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Previously, Soma won the “Words of Wisdom” spelling bee, which was hosted by Scott Remer, a former speller and study guide author, according to the Associated Press. He also won the “SpellPundit” bee and a first-of-its-kind online spelling bee.
“I always want to win. And this was, like, my main goal,” Soma 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.”
