Harini Logan

The 14-year-old from Texas clinched the 2022 title following a dramatic lightning-round tiebreaker.

Before she writes the great American novel, Logan said she plans to celebrate her Scripps Spelling Bee journey by traveling with her family. Logan’s biography on the Scripps National Spelling Bee site reveals she is an “avid reader,” and it was her love of the written word that led her to compete in spelling bees. During the vocabulary round, Logan described “pullulation” as the nesting of mating birds. “Really just focusing on the next word and knowing that I’m still in, I think was just a big relief for me.” She moved up the ranks quite a bit the following year, tying for 30th place in 2019, and then tied for 31st place last year. And then she had to face off against fellow finalist Vikram Raju, 12, in the historic lightning-round tiebreaker where both contestants misspelled a few tough words (including “drimys,” a genus of Australian shrubs).

Fourteen-year-old, of San Antonio, wins first-ever 'spell-off' in national US competition, taking home $50000 prize.

Raju went first and spelled 15 words correctly of the 19 he attempted. The Bee was televised live. The show’s host was actor LeVar Burton. Our 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion#Speller231Harini Logan draws inspiration from VP @KamalaHarris. After tonight, Harini is inspiring a new generation of spellers everywhere. She says it takes a village to build up a speller. Harini Logan, of San Antonio, has won the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee after a first-ever “spell-off” was required for a champion to emerge in the extremely close competition.

Harini Logan has won the Scripps National Spelling Bee, defeating Vikram Raju in the bee's first-ever lightning-round tiebreaker.

The bee itself was leaner, with fewer than half the participants it had in 2019 because of sponsors dropping out and the elimination of a wild-card program. The word was “drimys,” and she got it wrong. The last fully in-person version of the bee had no tiebreaker and ended in an eight-way tie. Then Vikram missed again and Harini got “sereh” right, putting her one word away from the title. Harini defined the word “pullulation” as the nesting of mating birds. “Really just focusing on the next word and knowing that I’m still in, I think was just a big relief for me.” She is the fifth Scripps champion to be coached by Walters, a former speller, fellow Texan and student at Rice University who is considering bowing out of the coaching business. Scripps said the correct answer was the swarming of bees. “We did a little sleuthing after you finished, which is what our job is, to make sure we’ve made the right decision,” Brooks said. “When it got introduced last year, I was a bit terrified, to be honest,” Harini said. The 14-year-old eighth-grader from San Antonio, Texas, who competed in the last fully in-person bee three years ago and endured the pandemic to make it back, spelled 22 words correctly during the 90-second spell-off, beating Vikram by seven. She misspelled four times as Scripps’ most challenging words proved too much for her and Vikram Raju, who also got four wrong in the closing stretch.

Even Mayor Ron Nirenberg congratulated the young speller on Twitter. She is the first San Antonio student to make it to the final round of the Scripps Bee in ...

The competition was fierce, and marked the first time the championship resulted in a lightning round spell-off since the competition's inception. Headed to high school next year, Harini has aged out of the national competition. San Antonio is buzzing after the news that our very own Harini Logan, a 14-year-old eighth grader at The Montessori School, emerged victorious at the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, June 2.

National Spelling Bee finalists visited the White House on Friday, celebrating and relaxing after an unprecedented spell-off at National Harbor.

And she was “super happy” for Harini, with whom she had talked earlier in the competition. Sitting in the audience Thursday night in Maryland, “listening to the two of them go, it was really impressive,” she said. “This year, I didn’t even expect to become a finalist,” Vikram said, adding, “I kind of learned my true potential from the bee. “It was looming,” said Harini, who had started practicing speed-spelling a month or two before the competition. “You know, it has been quite the overwhelming roller coaster,” Ayyar said. Harini fired off the same 12 to start, but she operated at a quicker pace, getting to 26 words in total and spelling 22 correctly. But she also wants to start a fund “for helping students in underprivileged areas where they can’t get access to the bee even if they want to do it.” The bee stretched late into Thursday night, culminating in the first spell-off in the competition’s history, between Harini and Vikram. The spell-off provision was added last year, Loeffler explained, though it wasn’t used. Harini credited her mother’s coaching for her win. Harini, a San Antonio native, tied for 323rd place in 2018, for 30th in 2019 and for 31st in 2021. He’s considering it, he said. Vikram, of Aurora, Colo., tied for 51st place in 2019 and for 21st last year.