WORD WIZARDS

The Friday File: This week, Shrey Parikh beat Ishaan Gupta in a lightening-round 90-second spell-off tiebreaker, a format introduced in 2022, to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Shrey spelled 32 words correctly, Ishaan only 25. The spell-off is the only time the competitors get the same words. Spell-off words included cywyddau, taurokathapsia, tessaraconter, rapakivi, uayeb, and melengket. The winning word was bromocriptine. Shrey won $52,500 and prizes. Thaumaston!