New Delhi

Indians continue to dominate the spelling competitions in the USA, as the 13-year-old Non-Resident Indian with roots in Hyderabad Faizan Zaki won the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in the USA.

Faizan Zaki lives in Dalla, Texas, and was the runner-up in the competition last year.

Faizan made it among 243 who made it to the national contest in Maryland on the Bee's

Faizan won a prize of US$ 50,000 (about Rs 42.78 lakh) by spelling the difficult French word ' Éclaircissement' in the final round.

With three spellers left on the Bee, Sarvdanya Kadam, and Sarv Dharavane kept getting their words wrong, leaving Faizan two words away from victory. The first was "Commelina", but instead of asking the usual questions—definition, native language—to ensure he knew it, Faizan let his showman instincts take over.

#Speller207 Faizan Zaki left everything on stage. A four-time competitor, 2024 Runner-Up, and now, the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion! Summing up his journey, “I was amazed when I won my first school bee. Then I just kept winning.”🐝 #TheBeeTurns100 #SpellingBee pic.twitter.com/CDJ3kuYcCt

— Scripps National Spelling Bee (@ScrippsBee) May 30, 2025

"K-a-m," he said, then stopped himself. "Okay, let me do this. Oh, shoot!"

"Just ring the bell," he told Chief Justice Mary Brooks, who did so.

"So now you know what happens," Brooks said, and the other two spellers returned to the stage.

Afterward, standing next to the trophy with confetti at his feet, Faizan said: "I'm definitely going to have nightmares about this tonight."

Even the pronouncer Jacques Bailly tried to slow Faizan down before his winning word "éclairsissement," but Faizan didn't ask a single question before spelling it correctly, and after saying the last letter he pumped his fists and fell to the stage.

Faizan's winning moment was captured in the pictures posted on X:

🏆 Faizan Zaki is your 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion!

The 13-year-old, who was last year’s runner-up, took home the Scripps Cup after correctly spelling éclaircissement — outspelling more than 240 students from across the country.

👏 Congrats to Faizan.… pic.twitter.com/KhLwjjkcb0

— Scripps News (@scrippsnews) May 30, 2025

This year the bee celebrates its 100th anniversary, and Faizan may be the first champion to be remembered more for getting the word wrong than getting the word right.

"I think he cared too much about his aura," said Faizan's friend Bruhat Soma, who beat him in a "spell-off" tiebreaker last year.

Faizan had a more nuanced explanation: after not preparing for the spell-off last year, he over-improvised by focusing on speed during his study sessions.

Although Bruhat was fast when needed last year, he followed the familiar playbook for champion spellers: asking thorough questions, spelling slowly and metronomically, and showing little emotion.

Faizan's father, Zaki Anwar, said: "He's the best. I really believe that. He's really good, man. He's been doing this for so long and he knows the dictionary."

After a little drama at last year's contest before suddenly going into a spell-off, Scripps changed the rules of the contest, giving the judges more leeway to finish the contest before going into a tie-breaker.

This is Faizan's winning spelling:

Check out Faizan Zaki spell ÉCLAIRCISSEMENT to win the 2025 #ScrippsNationalSpellingBee

Fun fact: He’s of Indian descent from Hyderabad, India.

pic.twitter.com/WaMWuVLghb

— Dr. Ayesha Ray (@DrAyeshaRay) May 30, 2025

The nine finalists performed well. During one stretch, six spellers got 28 words correct in a row and there were three perfect rounds during the finals. The last time a single perfect round occurred was in the infamous 2019 competition, which ended in an eight-way tie. Sarv, an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, who ultimately finished third, would have been the youngest champion since Nihar Janga in 2016. He has three years of eligibility remaining.

Like Faizan, who parents came from Hyderabad, Telangana, 30 of the past 36 champions are Indian Americans, a streak that began with Nupur Lala's win in 1999, which was later featured in the documentary Spellbound.

Lala was one of dozens of past champions who attended this year and signed autographs for spellers, families, and bee fans to honor the anniversary.

Adding the $25,000 prize for second place to the winner's $52,500 purse, Faizan raised his bee earnings to $77,500. What did he spend the most on with his winnings last year? A $1,500 Rubik's Cube with 21 squares on each side. This time around, he said he'll donate a larger portion of his winnings to charity.

Faizan has been spelling for more than half his life. He took part in the 2019 competition at age 7, gaining entry through a wild-card program that has now been discontinued. He qualified again in 2023 and made it to the semifinals before finishing second last year.

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"One thing that sets him apart is that he's really passionate about it. In his spare time, when he's not studying for the bee, he's really looking up old, outdated words that are unlikely to be asked for," Bruhat said.