I have the impression that English is the, er, Linga Franca of the educated classes in India. Surely the kid learned English over there before coming here.
Are we really sure he's from over there, though? Maybe he was born and/or raised in our own back yard, big though it is.
I reckon he would have had to spell a word that someone else missed. He might have just used intuition to get it. OTOH, intuition about how words might be spelled is not a bad thing and may be a skill in its own right. He might have tried P-O-C-C-O ... but he didn't. Also standing up there with the pressure on - this was his final year to do it - makes it all the easier to slip up.
Browsing spellingbee.com, I note he attended a Catholic school instead of being homeschooled. (Thirty-one of the 251 spellers were categorized as homeschooled.)
The second place winner was homeschooled. Of top 6, 2 were homeschooled.
From their web page, his winning words were:
1 sanguine sanguine
2 (written round) (advanced to round three)
3 insalubrious insalubrious
4 Veracruzano Veracruzano
5 marmoraceous marmoraceous
6 mistassini mistassini
7 solfeggio solfeggio
8 piezochemistry piezochemistry
9 voussoir voussoir
10 halogeton halogeton
11 dipnoous dipnoous
12 gadarene gadorene
13 peirastic peirastic
14 rhathymia rhathymia
15 pococurante pococurante
Not all were difficult, but most I think are not too obvious.
I also just noticed that the first winner ever was Frank Neuhauser of Louisville,KY in 1925. The second winner was Pauline Bell also of Louisville, in 1926. Further along was Waneeta Beckley of Louisville in 1937.
Some other cities with multiple champions: Denver, El Paso, Knoxville.
I'm kinda wondering if this thing started in KY or somewhere thereabouts.
(Just check their site and, yes, it was started by the Louisville Courier-Journal.)
k
