Kansas girl nails 'Laodicean' to win U.S. spelling championship

Kavya Shivashankar, the 13-year-old Kansas girl who wrote out every word on her palm, rattled off the letters to "Laodicean" Thursday night to become the country's spelling champion.

The budding neurosurgeon from Olathe, Kan., outlasted 11 finalists to win the 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee, taking home more than $40,000 in cash and prizes and, of course, the huge champion's trophy.

After spelling the winning word, which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics, Kavya received huge hugs from her father, mother and little sister.

Kavya was making her fourth appearance at the bee, having finishing 10th, eighth and fourth over the last three years. She enjoys playing the violin, bicycling, swimming and learning Indian classical dance.

Her role model is Nupur Lala, the 1999 champion featured in the documentary Spellbound.

Second place went to 12-year-old Tim Ruiter of Centreville, Va., the only non-teenager in the finals. He misspelled "maecenas," which means a cultural benefactor.

Aishwarya Pastapur, 13, from Springfield, Ill., who loved to pump her arm and exclaim "Yes!" after getting a word correct, finished third after flubbing "menhir," a type of monolith.

The day began with 41 semifinalists. Five were eliminated in one round, then 20 — including three Canadians — were wiped out in a round. The three Canadians were Veronica Penny of Hamilton, Laura Newcombe of Toronto and Claudine Broussard of Port Hawkesbury, N.S.

From there, five advanced to the final round.