Spelling Bees

The two had been gobbling up words since last November when the school list was given out. The school competition took place in January when they got the full package of no less than 4,000 sample list words with various levels of difficulty. Proud mama Anahita said, "It got a bit competitive at home. They studied for at least an hour a day after their regular homework, and about three hours on the weekends.” The girls prepared by quizzing each other. "One saw the word and the other spelt it, so they both benefited.”
At the county round, 13-year-old Farah expectedly out-spelled her younger sister but fell to an easy word. "She overanalyzed the word ‘Ponzi,’” explained dad Farokh, adding that this was her second trip to the Bee’s county round. Ten-year-old Ferzeen, who debuted at the Bee, stumbled on the word ‘sclerosis’ when she put in an ‘h’ there. How was the experience for the girls? For Farah, "it was very scary and nerve wracking but fun all the same!” Ferzeen thought "it was a great experience. I learnt a lot of new words and that’s all that matters!” The dad said he noticed the difference in the groundwork of the siblings. "Farah was the more nervous of the two and she wanted to go through the entire list as this was her last chance at the Bees. On the other hand, Ferzeen seemed to prepare like…there is always the next time,” knowing this was the first of four chances.
The winner who was expected to compete at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC in May was a fellow Indian, Vikram Goddla, an eighth-grader. He correctly spelled ‘gelatigenous,’ which means "producing or yielding gelatin.”
Roxanne Kavarana Vakharia