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Spelling success

Rohan Jaishankar won the Chennai leg of the National Spelling Bee Contest 2006 for school students

WORD POWER Rohan Jaishankar of Bala Vidya Mandir Photo: K. Pichumani

Rohan Jaishankar was the shortest of them all. But at the end of the Chennai leg of the Annapurna National Spelling Bee Contest 2006 for school students (most of them aged 11 or below), he stood head and shoulders above all other contestants. With every round, the boy from Bala Vidya Mandir gave fresh evidence of his ability "to put in correct order letters that made up tricky English words". Barring one round (the last), in which nerves got the better of him, the boy did not give a wrong answer. From a fray that included over 1,000 children, Rohan emerged as "Chennai's Spelling Champion".

Giri `Pickbrain' Balasubramaniam, who takes the contest to cities around the country, said, "Without any shade of doubt, Chennai has recorded the highest turnout" — 1,020. A written test ousted 1,008 of them — interestingly, most of the kids got their scores from spelling difficult words right; but, strangely, their spelling abilities seemed to decrease when the word length decreased and if the word was commonplace. The triumphant 12 were divided into two groups of six each. When the contest is viewed in its totality, the first semi-final (the semis were contested on a kind of knock-out system) was lacklustre. If you ignore performances by Chettinad Vidyashram's Nikhil, who as a Class VI student (all others were Class VII students) was the baby of the lot, and Varsha Naganathan from St. John's English School, tentative answers ruled the roost. Rukmini Girish from Bala Vidya Mandir shone in patches. She started off well, spelling words like d-r-a-u-g-h-t (beer) with ease, but lost her confidence (when she spelt a word wrong she walked off stage thinking she had been eliminated) and fumbled on easy words (such as b-a-u-x-i-t-e), but managed to crawl into the finals. The balance tilted in small-made Nikhil's favour when he spelt d-i-m-i-n-u-t-i-v-e (When Giri put the word to him, he said "it was a word appropriate for the little boy").

The second semi was more closely fought. Giri remarked, "everyone was getting everything right", when the six took in their stride z-o-m-b-i-e, a-p-o-s-t-r-o-p-h-e, e-q-u-i-n-o-x and other words that you normally expect to test the spelling abilities of Class VII students. The restless audience had to wait for f-l-u-o-r-e-s-c-e-n-t and p-r-o-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-i-o-n to break the deadlock. One expected the three who survived the second semi — Rohan, Asmita (from DAV Girls) and Joshua Mark George (from Sherwood Hall) — to be the main contenders in the finals (which was based on a point system). But Rukmini upset the calculation. She seemed to have learnt all the English words by rote during the brief interval, as she was perhaps a shade less impressive than Rohan who had a head start and capitalised on it with every successive round. Varsha, Joshua and Nikhil looked a pale imitation of what they seemed to be in the semis. When Rohan had sailed through without a hitch, Asmita and Rukmini were tied on 61. The tiebreaker was long-drawn as both got p-a-r-a-d-i-g-m wrong and a horde of words right. Rukmini made it when Asmita slipped on the m-e-z-z-a-n-i-n-e floor.

PRINCE FREDERICK

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