Harini Logan Wins the National Spelling Bee After Blazing Through the Competition's First Spell-Off

Harini Logan won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, claiming victory in a blistering, first-of-its-kind spell-off that capped a marathon duel of one arcane term after another. From a report: Harini, 14, an eighth grader from San Antonio, beat Vikram Raju, 12, a seventh grader from Denver, after she rattled off word after word in a 90-second speed round. Both students spelled so fast that the judges had to go to video to determine a winner: Harini spelled 21 words correctly, compared with 15 for Vikram. It was a tense victory that came after she was briefly eliminated and then reinstated earlier in the finals, when the judges decided that a definition she had given for the word pullulation was acceptable. Harini, who was making her fourth and final eligible appearance in the Bee, said winning felt "so surreal." "This is just such a dream," she said, holding the trophy on national television. Vikram stood nearby with his family, visibly trembling and his head bowed with the high emotions of the three-hour contest. But when the Bee's host, LeVar Burton, asked Vikram if he would return to the Bee next year, in what would be his own last eligible year, the boy, shaking but sounding resolute, gave a decisive "yes." It was the first time the Bee has used a spell-off since the national contest's inception, in 1925, and it came after Harini and Vikram took turns spelling a series of words incorrectly, meaning a winner could not be crowned. To viewers, the pressure of the moment felt akin to penalty kicks in a high-stakes soccer tournament.

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