Scripps National Spelling Bee ends in historic eight-way tie

Tom Gatto

Scripps National Spelling Bee ends in historic eight-way tie image

Talk about staying step for step to the wire. The closing rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee final Thursday night created no separation and thus produced a historic dead heat.

The eight spellers who remained in the competition until its conclusion were correct on the last 47 words. At the end of the final round, Round 20, those eight youths were declared co-champions, a first in the 92 editions of the competition.

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The co-champs and their winning words:

Rishik Gandhasri; auslaut
Erin Howard; erysipelas
Saketh Sundar; bougainvillea; bougainvillia
Shruthika Padhy; aiguillette
Sohum Sukhatankar; pendeloque
Abhijay Kodali; palama
Christopher Serrao; cernuous
Rohan Raja; odylic

Spelling Bee organizers determined that they would run out of difficult words and thus decided to name co-champions after 20 rounds. Previous ties involved just two spellers.

Each of the winning contestants will receive the $50,000 first prize and their own championship trophy.

Naturally, the decision to recognize multiple champions brought out the Twitter comedians, a lot of whom referenced UCF football:

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.