By: Alex Chu
On June 2, 2022 Harini Logan participated in a historic spell-off the at Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland. In a spelling bee, a spell-off occurs when two or more spellers go through several rounds without being eliminated from the competition.
How Did She Win
Logan competed against and defeated 228 spellers to become the National Spelling Bee champion. She won a 50,000 dollar cash prize and a spelling bee trophy. Initially, Harini Logan was eliminated in an earlier round of competition. However, she was reinstated after the judges realized her description was also correct because the answer had the same meaning. Once she got back in the competition, Logan successfully passed ahead until she faced just one other speller, 12-year-old Vikram Raju from Colorado. Logan misspelled four words. Fortunately, her competitor missed just as many, leading to a spell-off. Logan and Raju were both required to correctly spell as many words as possible from a list in 90 seconds. Unlike previous rounds, they were not allowed to ask about the word's meaning, part of speech, or origin. Raju managed to get 15 of the 19 right, while Logan spelled 21 of the 26 words correctly. Logan's exciting win is one for the history books. She is the first Scripps champion to be reinstated into the competition and the first to win it in a spell-off.