12-year-old Bruhat Soma of Florida typed the words with his fingers in the air as he quickly rattled off correctly the spelling of 29 words in 90 seconds.
It was enough to win a spell off against Faizan Zaki of Texas and claim the Scripps National Spelling Bee championship, reported the Tampa Bay Times.
The technique known as air typing mimicked what Soma did religiously every day for practice. He’s type words rapidly into a computer as part of a computer game he played.
“When they first announced there was a spell off, my heart was pumping so fast but then I realized – because I was practicing spell-offs for six months – I realized that, ‘Maybe I have a shot at winning,’” Bruhat said to CNN. “And I did.”
The spell off is a tie breaker intended to speed up the competition and ensure there can be a winner within the two-hour window for television. The competition is broadcast on Ion, a network owned by Scripps.
That window is so tight Zaki and Soma did not have a chance to compete head-to-head in a conventional round because of lack of time.
“I don’t think it was a good bee,” said 2023 champion Dev Shah to The Independent. “It’s not about spelling as many words as you can in 90 seconds. That’s not what the spelling bee is.”
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