Young Turks - Sameer Mishra

Sameer Mishra is a 13-year-old eighth grader who came out as the winner of 81st Scripps National Spelling Bee/Spelldown, that took place on May 30, 2008. He won $35,000 in cash and more than $5,000 in saving bonds and other prizes.

Sameer Mishra is an Indian-American, studying currently in eighth grade in Indiana. As the Spelling Bee site states, the guy can't possibly be called a bookwork, n loves to

• read books
• play computer and video games
• play board games
• play violin
• ride his bike, n hang out with friends
• aspires to a career as a neurosurgeon.

Scripps National Spelling Bee is an annual spelling bee/spelldown competition held at Grand Hyatt washington hotel in washington, D.C. The competition consists of 3 rounds, Round 1 is 25-word multiple-choice written test. Round 2 is an oral round. Third and final round is a single-elimination oral round - each participant is given a word to spell, and is given a time of 2 minutes and thirty seconds to do so. And during this time duration, the participant is allowed to ask for,

• Definition of word
• Usage in a sentence
• Alternate pronunciations
• Alternate definitions
• Language(s) of origin

Although Sameer mishra was the ultimate winner, we had 4 more indians in the top 20 list. The final list of winners stood like this

• Sameer Mishra [1st Place]
  
• Sidharth Chand [2nd Place]
  
• Samia Nawaz [4th Place, tie]
• Kavya Shivashankar [4th place, tie]
• Jahnavi Iyer [8th place, tie]

!! Hail Achievers !!