San Antonio girl wins spelling bee in tiebreaker round

Harini Logan kept trying to learn from her near-misses in online spelling bees. Recognized for years as one of the best spellers in the English language, she had never taken home a national title.

In the biggest bee of them all, she endured a new series of setbacks, but somehow, at the end, she was still there.

Harini was eliminated, then reinstated, during the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s much-debated multiple-choice vocabulary round. She misspelled four times as Scripps’ most challenging words proved too much for her and Vikram Raju, who also got four wrong in the closing stretch. And then she finally took down Vikram in the bee’s first-ever lightning-round tiebreaker on Thursday night in Oxen Hill, Maryland.

“Harini has been to hell and back with her spelling bee experiences,” said her longtime coach, Grace Walters.

The 14-year-old eighth-grader from San Antonio, Texas, who competed in the last fully in-person bee three years ago and endured the pandemic to make it back, spelled 22 words correctly during the 90-second spell-off,

beating Vikram by seven. The winning word, according to Scripps, was “moorhen,” which means the female of the red grouse, because that was the one that moved her past Vikram. Judges announced at the bee that Harini’s word total was 21, but she was credited with one more after a later video review.

Over the past few months, the ever-prepared Harini had practiced for the possibility of a lightning round, a format she found uncomfortable.

“When it got introduced last year, I was a bit terrified, to be honest,” Harini said. “I go slow. That’s my thing. I didn’t know how I would fare in that setting.”

Harini, a favorite for her poise and positivity, won more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. She is the first Scripps champion to be reinstated during the competition.

“I think it would have been really easy for me to get deterred, to get sort of like, ‘Wow, why am I missing so much?’” Harini said. “Really just focusing on the next word and knowing that I’m still in, I think was just a big relief for me.”

Vihaan Sibal, a 13-year-old from Mcgregor, Texas, finished third and also has another year of eligibility. Saharsh Vuppala, a 13-yearold eighth-grader from Bellevue, Washington, was fourth.

JOSE LUIS MAGANA/ASSOCIATED PRESS Harini Logan, 14, hoists her Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy Thursday in Oxon Hill, Md., as her father, Logan Anjaneyulu, looks on. She spelled 22 words correctly during a 90-second spell-off.