The Atlantic

The Youths Have Outsmarted the Scripps National Spelling Bee

<em>Moazagotl</em> and <em>c</em><em>houmoellier</em> are just too easy for today’s spelling-bee champs.
Source: Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Last night, at the end of the final round of the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, a record eight students were still standing, having calmly rattled off the correct spellings of words like psammosere, choumoellier, and Logudorese. The eight—Rishik Gandhasri, Erin Howard, Saketh Sundar, Shruthika Padhy, Sohum Sukhatankar, Abhijay Kodali, Christopher Serrao, and Rohan Raja—now share the title of co-champion. It’s a confusing result in a competition that usually crowns one individual champion, or—as has been common recently but rare historically—two.

Scott Remer, the author of and the

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