The winner of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee has been crowned.
Bruhat Soma, a 12-year-old from Florida, bested the competition Thursday with his spelling of “abseil,” a word used to describe descending a vertical surface area with a rope attached to one’s body.
Soma spelled 29 out of 30 words correctly in Scripps’ second-ever spell-off, in which competitors have 90 seconds to spell as many words given to them as possible.
“Well, I’m really excited,” Soma said shortly after being named the winner. “It’s been my goal for this past year to win, and I’ve been working really hard, so I just put a lot of time into spelling, and then now I’m really happy that I won. Like, I really can’t describe it. I’m still shaking.”
