The second edition of the Spell Bee competition organised by Deccan Herald in Education at the Bal Bhavan here on Wednesday saw nail-biting finishes for those competing for the second place in both the Senior and Junior categories. It went up to tie-breakers to decide who would win second and third places.
As for the first place, the results were clear-cut. Anirudh Sreeram of class 8 from St Joseph’s Boys’ High School reigned as the Master Speller in the Senior section (class 7-10) and 10-year-old Raghav Balakrishnan from BGS National Public School, Hulimavu, in the Junior section. Both of them surpassed their opponents by a large margin. Anirudh bagged 185 points while Raghav had 130 points at the end of the final round.
Interestingly, in both the Senior and Junior sections, the tie-breaker was used to decide the second and third positions. At the end of the last round in the Junior section, Mithilesh Sai Y of Cambridge Public School, HSR Layout, and Krishanu Dey of HAL Public School tied with 105 points each. Their fate was decided by the word ‘geyser’. Mithilesh won the tie-breaker.
In the Senior section, the Greek word for ‘cure for all diseases’ (panacea) broke the tie between Sana Ayesha of National Public School, Yeshwantpur, and Muralikrishna M of Deccan International School, Padmanabhanagar. They had 120 points each. Sana won the tie-breaker.
The competition began with the prelims round after which 18 students qualified for the final round. While the students had answers to most of the words thrown at them, words like ‘burqini’ stumped the Junior students. But they were happy and surprised to find out the synonym for ‘bumblebee’ is ‘dumbledore’, a favourite character from the Harry Potter series.
The Senior students too had to face quite a few uncommon words. For instance, words like ‘gerbil’, ‘lectern’, and ‘bursar’, grabbed the attention of many. The English spelling of ‘cummerbund’ — a common Urdu word — had the students perplexed.
There were two rounds for the finalists in the Junior section and three for the senior students. The junior students were given descriptions for items and asked to name and spell them.
They were shown visuals, for which they had to write the answers. The senior students had an additional round. They were given a set of three questions, or three words to spell within a minute.
Arul Mani, of the Karnataka Quiz Association, was the Spell Bee Master.