A Leander ISD student was crowned co-champion in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington.
Nihar Janga, 11, is a fifth-grade student at River Ridge Elementary School and took first place at a local competition to reach the national spelling bee. He won that local bee with the word "snotziekte."
Janga will share the title with Jairam Hathwar of New York.
The 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee started with 285 spellers. Go here for more information. Janga started the finals on Thursday with 44 other students, and advanced to the evening final with nine other spellers.
In the early rounds, Janga spelled the following words correctly (definition from Merriam-Webster in parentheses). Rounds 8-15 are the Final rounds, Rounds 16 on are the Championship rounds:
- Round 1: Preliminaries Test (Janga achieved a perfect score here)
- Round 2: revendicate (to bring an action to enforce rights in (specific property) especially for the recognition of ownership and the recovery of possession from one wrongfully in possession)
- Round 3: mimosa (a tropical tree or shrub that has small white or pink flowers that are shaped like balls; or an alcoholic drink made with champagne and orange juice)
- Round 4: tibourbou (a tropical American tree (Apeiba tibourbou) of the family Tiliaceae with yellowish flowers in lateral cymes, bark that yields jangada fiber, and an extraordinarily light wood that is used along the coast of Brazil for making jangadas)
- Round 5: Berkelium (a radioactive metallic element produced artificially (as by bombarding americium 241 with alpha particles))
- Round 6: helichrysum (when capitalized: a large genus of mostly African and Australian plants (family Compositae) with flower heads having shining involucres which retain their color when dried)
- Round 7: persillade (dressed with or containing parsley)
- Round 8: galago (a type of primate)
- Round 9: lovat (a predominantly dusty color mixture (as of green) in fabrics)
- Round 10: hypozeuxis (the use in a parallel construction of successive clauses each complete with subject and verb)
- Round 11: iiwi (an Hawaiian honeycreeper (Vestiaria coccinea) with chiefly bright vermilion plumage formerly used in making feather cloaks)
- Round 12: gisant (a recumbent sculpture of a deceased person shown usually with arms crossed over the chest)
- Round 13: bailliage
- Round 14: quillon (an arm of the cross guard of a sword)
- Round 15: berceuse
- Round 16: schepen
- Round 17: cypraeiform
- Round 18: melilot
- Round 19: giallolino
- Round 20: appetitost
- Round 21: ergataner
- Round 22: biniou
- Round 23: Taoiseach
- Round 24: uintjie
- Round 25: gerrhosaurid
- Round 26: refraîchissoir
- Round 27: ayacahuite (for the championship, misspelled)
- Round 28: promyshlennik
- Round 29: écorché
- Round 30: villancico
- Round 31: parinari
- Round 32: ynambu
- Round 33: phulkari
- Round 34: haab
- Round 35: Hohenzollern
- Round 36: Groenendael
- Round 37: tetradrachm (misspelled)
- Round 38: euchologion
- Round 39: gesellschaft
Go here to see the prizes the spellers will receive.
