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Dev Shah Wiki – Dev Shah Biography

Soft-spoken but brimming with confidence, Dev Shah asked pointed questions about obscure Greek roots, was quick to utter his penultimate word and made it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee headline on Thursday night. Dev, a 14-year-old from Largo, Florida, had his spelling career interrupted by the pandemic and then failed to make it out of his regional bee last year.

He topped his highly competitive regional this year for a third and final national title attempt, ending up holding the trophy over his head as confetti rained down. His winning word was “psammophila,” a platter for a speller of his caliber. “Psammo means sand, Greek?” he asked him. Phile, what does love mean, Greek? Dev absorbed the moment by asking for the word to be used in a sentence, something he had described a day earlier as a delay tactic.

He then covered his face with his hands and was declared the winner. Charlotte Walsh, a 14-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, came in second and gave Dev a congratulatory hug. Dev, who previously appeared on The Bee in 2019 and 2021, was close to many of his fellow finalists.

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“They’ve all been to a lot of online contests and a lot of Scripps National Spelling Bees, and I felt like a spark and a camaraderie between all of us,” she said. “I am very grateful and privileged to be able to be in a spelling bee with them for the last time.”

Fifteen months ago, it wasn’t certain that Dev would return. He had a miserable experience at his regional meet last year, finishing fourth after spelling for five hours in cold, wet weather at an outdoor soccer stadium in Orlando.

“It took, I would say, at least four months to get back on track,” he said. “I just didn’t know if I wanted to continue.” As the field narrowed down to just Dev and Charlotte, Scripps rang the buzzer used for the “spell” tiebreaker, and Dev was momentarily confused as he stepped up to the microphone.

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“This isn’t the spell, is it?” Dev asked. When told he wasn’t, he spelled “bathypitotmeter” so fast it might as well have been, the latest example of his unassuming onstage arrogance. “I practiced for the spell every day, I guess. I knew it could happen and I prepared myself for everything so I went into spell mode,” Dev said. “But I was also scared by the spell.”

Dev Shah Age

The age of Dev Shah is 14 years.

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Dev Shah’s Biography

Dev wins over $50,000 in cash and prize money and is the 22nd champion in the last 24 years with South Asian heritage. His father, Deval, a software engineer, immigrated to the United States from India 29 years ago to earn his master’s degree in electrical engineering. Since then, he has added an MBA from the University of Florida. Dev’s older brother, Neil, is on the rise at Yale.

Deval said his son showed an incredible memory with words from the age of 3, and Dev spent many years participating in academic competitions organized by the North South Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to children in India. The contest began in 1925 and is open to students through eighth grade. Spellers qualify by winning regional competitions across the country.

There were 229 children on stage at the start of this year’s national pageant, and each one was a champion many times over, considering that 11 million participated at the school level.

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While the bee is smaller and the field not as deep as it was in pre-pandemic years, this year’s finalists demonstrated impressive knowledge as they worked their way through a sometimes devilish list of words.

The selection proved that the competition can remain entertaining while delving deeper into the dictionary than in the past, especially in the finals’ second round of spelling, when Scripps peppered contestants with short but harsh words like “traik” (get sick, used). in Scotland), “hawksbill” (a small to medium-sized sea turtle) and “katuka” (a venomous snake from southeast Asia).

With the field reduced to four, Shradha Rachamreddy was knocked out in “orle”, a heraldic term meaning a series of small charges arranged to form a border within the border of a field (she chose “orel”). And “kelep”, a stinging Central American ant, drove out Surya Kapu (he said “quelep”).

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While Scripps’ use of trademarks and geographic names can sometimes anger spelling traditionalists who want to see children demonstrate their mastery of linguistic roots and patterns, and even exceptions to those patterns, Scripps has made it clear that, with the exception of words designated as archaic or obsolete, any entry in Merriam-Webster’s unabridged dictionary is fair game.Read More……

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