Soft-spoken but brimming with confidence, Dev Shah asked precise questions about obscure Greek roots, rushed through his second-to-last word and rolled to the Scripps National Spelling Bee title Thursday night.
Dev, a 14-year-old from Largo, Florida, had his spelling career interrupted by the pandemic, then didn't make it out of his regional bee last year. He got through his highly competitive regional this year for his third and final try at the national title, and he ended up holding the trophy over his head as confetti fell.
His winning word was “psammophile,” a layup for a speller of his caliber.
“Psammo meaning sand, Greek?” he asked. “Phile, meaning love, Greek?”
He soaked up the moment by asking for the word to be used in a sentence, something he described a day earlier as a stalling tactic. Then he put his hands over his face as he was declared the winner.
Charlotte Walsh, a 14-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, was the runner-up.
King Charles III will be taking a shorter ride to Westminster Abbey, trimming the procession route his mother took in 1953 as he aims for a more modest coronation that will include some modern touches.
Chef Danielle Sepsy, a finalist on the cooking competition show The Big Brunch and owner of The Hungry Gnome bakery in New York City, explains how her delivery customers are able to enjoy fresh-tasting cookies at home and how her big TV spot translated into more hiring.
Egg prices have skyrockets since last Easter, with prices more than doubling between February 2022 and February 2023. Now families are trying to balance their budgets with the Easter tradition of dyeing eggs.
Chef Danielle Sepsy, a finalist on the cooking competition show The Big Brunch and owner of The Hungry Gnome bakery in New York City, demonstrated how to manke her famous, ooey-gooey Bunny Track cookies.
