Indians inching towards American title

Six Indian origin students advanced at US' most prestigious spelling contest.

Six Indian origin students have advanced to the preliminary rounds of the United States' most prestigious word spelling contest, the Scripps National Spelling bee, which opened with a record number of 275 contestants.

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The students soared through tiring four rounds on Wednesday, braving words like Mustelidae, lipothymia, estrepe, ibidem, sporran, homiletics, grandrelle, burnettize, myrmidon, dowager and a written round of 25 toughest words like sprachgefuhl, oeillade, Capharnaum and perciatelli.

Amongst those who advanced to the preliminary rounds are the 2006 National Geography Bee winner Bonny Jain, Prateek Kohli, two year repeater Sameer Mishra, Kavya Shivashankar and Aishwarya Pastapur.

The fourth round was stopped last evening the minute 12 year-old star speller Samir Patel of Texas approached the microphone, leaving the "human spell check" and "a rock star" of the spelling world disappointed.

"I just wanted to get my word and get it over," said Samir, who tied for second place in last year's contest.

He has been participating in the bee ever since he was 9. So far he has won 3rd, 5th and 2nd place and huge international attention and applause because of his confidence and mastery over the words.

Besides Samir, Indian Americans are also counting on two more strong four time repeaters Nidharshan Subra Anandasivam and Anjay V Ajodha, both from Texas.

And, last but not the least Sachith Gullapalli of Virginia. These four are yet to advance into the preliminary rounds and will hopefully advance after breezing through the fourth round which begins from Patel from Thursday.