Indian-American girl from Pa. wins national spelling bee

Associated Press

OXON HILL, Md.

It went on and on and on. Five spellers who seemingly had memorized the entire dictionary simply could not be stumped with any word tossed their way. It was getting late, way past bedtime and well beyond the time slot allotted by ESPN for its telecast.

Finally, after 21 consecutive spellings without a miss, one of them finally flubbed a word. Eventually, the others were gone — having heard the telltale bell of elimination — except for 14-year-old eighth grader Sukanya Roy of South Abington Township, Pa., who took home the trophy and the more than $40,000 in cash and prizes Thursday at the 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee.

“I went through the dictionary once or twice,” said Sukanya, who tied for 12th in 2009 and 20th in 2010, “and I guess some of the words really stuck.”

Sukanya’s winning word was “cymotrichous,” which relates to wavy hair. She likes hiking, rock climbing and ice skating, wants to travel and perhaps pursue a career in international relations. She is the fourth consecutive Indian-American to win the bee and the ninth in the last 13 years, a run that began when Nupur Lala captured the crown in 1999 and was later featured in the documentary “Spellbound.”

“They look up to that. But I don’t know how that impacted her,” said Sukanya’s farther, Abhijit Roy. “This is not something we pressurized her to do. She wanted to do this by herself, and we basically just helped her along. It’s a few years; this didn’t happened overnight.”

Laura Newcombe of Toronto was the runner-up. The 12-year-old was trying to become the first Canadian to win the bee, but she went out on the word “sorites,” her look of concentration turning suddenly to a sad one when she realized she’d misspelled it.

Lauren Ritz, the Vindicator’s champion in the national bee from New Castle, Pa., was eliminated after Round 2 on Wednesday.