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A spell-tacular end

What started out as a 301-contestant battle a month ago resulted in 16 contestants left after nine hours of The Danube Spelling Bee finals on Saturday.

The event, held at Centerpoint Theatre, Ductac, Mall Of The Emirates, featured words like “Drosophilist”, “Formaldehyde”, “Bolshevik”, “Guilloche” and “Onychophagia”.

The semi-finals of this championship, held at the same venue in mid-January, had 301 contestants, which by the end whittled down to a 101. A list of 1,500 words was distributed last month to the 101 finalists from schools across the UAE following American, British and Indian curricula. But apart from the words in the study list, finalists were also quizzed on ‘outside words’. Finalists were from grades 6 to 10 aged between 11 and 15.

In her green uniform, 12-year-old Nisha Venkat from DPS Dubai was one of the finalists, having cleared last month’s semi finals after correctly spelling ‘Apathy’ and ‘Umlaut’. In the last month, Nisha spent a significant amount of time learning words from the list as well as from outside the list. “Ten pages a day,” says the confident youngster.

Nisha’s friend, Pratiksha Rao is her ‘senior’ in school. Pratiksha, 14, is in grade 9. She stumbled on the tricky ‘inesculent’, and while she would not go further in the contest, she’s a good friend, having stayed put solely for moral support.

The crowd of parents were naturally thinner at the finale than during last month’s semi-final stage. Kavya Shivashankar, the 16-year-old enunciator, a veteran panelist for these competitions, was seated beside her father and former coach, Merle Shivashankar who was the judge of the contest.

An impressive set of prizes await the champions: Dh25,000 goes to the winner, Dh15,000 for the first runner up and Dh10,000 for the second runner up. Winners in the next two places get Dh7,500 and Dh2,500 respectively. The prizes are sponsored by MetLife Alico. Emax sponsored electronic gifts, such as tablets, phones, gaming consoles, cameras and ipods for the top 10. All 101 finalists also got participation medals. - nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

Results

• “Wallaby” Champion Word - Pranathi Mahesh Rao – Grade 9G – Modern High School
• First Runner-Up – Chelsea D Cruz – Winchester School – Grade 9G1
• Second Runner-Up – Jodmutt Bhatt – Millenium Dubai- Grade 10B