Krishay Dhar from the Junior category and Anuraag Vombatkere from the Sub-Junior category emerged winners at the Spell-O-Well Finals held at SMART Campus in August 2018. The annually held spelling competition challenges students’ proficiency to spell advanced vocabulary.

The event took place in the multi-purpose hall with the latest state-of-the-art technology on display. 30 finalists from East Coast and SMART Campus reached the finals after passing two rounds of intense competition.  Contestants participated individually unlike past years where they took part in  groups.  

As the day of the grand finals rolled around, contestants pitted against each other in a number of rounds. The interesting lineup of themes included 1) identifying jumbled up and misspelt words, 2) determining a singular word to describe four pictures, 3) finding the right word to fit the blanks in Hit the Word and 4) finding the correct word in the Boggle round.

The number of contestants reduced in each round till only the top four scorers remained, paving their way to the final Rapid-Fire round.  As per the rules, each contestant was given a set of 10 words to be spelled in one minute. Tallying up the scores of this round revealed that 2 contestants tied for the first spot while the remaining 2 tied for the last spot.

The tensed atmosphere was palpable as the audience were cheering louder than ever before for their preferred contestant.  It took 2 additional rounds of spelling words to decide the Champion and 1st Runner Up. However, it wasn’t as simple to determine the 2nd Runner Up as it took at least 8 more rounds before he was finally chosen.

Below are the names of today’s winners from both categories.

The Winners of Junior Category are:

Spelling Bee Champion: Krishay Dhar (EC – grade 5)

1st Runner's Up:  Siddhant Vyas (EC – grade 6)

2nd Runner's Up: Mukesh Balan Asok Kumar (EC – grade 6)

The Winners of Sub Junior Category are:

Spelling Bee Champion: Anuraag Vombatkere (EC – grade 4)

1st Runner's Up: Inesh Ihom Saifullah (PG – grade 3)

2nd Runner's Up: Krithin Jay Pakshootra(EC – grade 3)