KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A spelling bee between two Kansas City-area students who exhausted the initial word list last month ended Saturday after a marathon 75 rounds when the eventual runner-up stumbled over the word “stifling.”
For more than an hour, seventh-grader Kush Sharma, 13, and fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman, 11, went toe-to-toe in the continuation of the Jackson County Spelling Bee, which began two weeks ago but had to be extended after the two breezed through the word list provided by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, then 20 more words picked out of the dictionary.
The contestants had no problem correctly spelling words like “boodle” and “slobber.” But at the end of the 28th round Saturday, Sophia appeared puzzled when attempting to spell “stifling,” and even more so when the bell rang to indicate she had gotten it wrong.
After being given his final word, “definition,” Kush drew chuckles from spectators watching from a different room in the Kansas City Public Library when he asked for the definition. He promptly spelled it correctly and won the bee.
