A 13-year-old New York boy has been crowned the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion after successfully spelling the German-derived Yiddish word “knaidel.”
Arvind Mahankali out of New York finished in third place the previous two years and a ninth place finish in 2010, but this was his year. After a tightly contested back and forth battle, Mahankali was crowned the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion after successfully spelling German word ”knaidel”. Knaidel is a small mass of leavened dough or a dumpling.
After second-place finisher Pranav Sivakumar from Illinois misspelled “cyanophycean”, Mahankali had to spell two words correctly. He successfully spelled “tokonoma”, before successfully spelling “knaidel”, which was a German word. For those unfamiliar with Mahankali’s past in the spelling bee, German words have always been his downfall.
I’m glad to see Arvind overcame his akillies heal. But for what it’s worth, I think he deserved to be Spelling Bee champion just for spelling his own name.
