There’s something about spelling bees that makes them “oddly compelling,” said Kristen A. Graham in The Philadelphia Inquirer. And this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee was no exception. Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar, from Olathe, Kan., won by correctly spelling “Laodicean” (which means indifferent to religion or politics) in the dramatic finale of the annual three-day “spectacle.”
Kavya Shivashankar and the other contestants mirror the diversity of America at its best, said Dashiell Bennett in Deadspin. From fourth- to eighth-graders, the kids are of all races—and every one of them is “an adorable, awkward nerd.” The competitors "get cocky, they strut, they talk sass to the judges—then they misspell a Greek word for 'goat horn' or something and their little dreams are crushed." It's "riveting."
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