Picture is reproduced by kind permission of Scripps Howard.

The 73rd Annual National Spelling Bee was won by George Abraham Thampy of St. Louis, Missouri. The competition lasted 15 rounds and there were 910 words spelled by 248 competitors. George took the magnificent trophy and the $10,000 by correctly spelling the word "demarche", meaning a maneuver. He did this in a calm manner in front of a large audience in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington DC, and a national television audience on ESPN. 12 year old, 7th grader, George was one of many home schoolers who participated in the competition. If there could ever be a favourite in such an event, then George was surely it after coming 3rd in the 1998 Spelling Bee, 2nd in the 99 Bee and placing 2nd in the National Geography Bee last week. His hobbies include Boy Scouts and, not surprisingly, reading.

When interviewed after the final, George managed to stammer that the only word he was unsure of was "emmetropia" in Round 7, meaning the normal refractive conditon of the eye in which parallel rays of light are brought to focus on the retina. George's 15 words were:

• fondu
• waiver
• serendipity
• ersatz
• surfactant
• vesicant
• emmetropia
• annelid
• trophobiosis
• psilosis
• quodlibet
• eudaemonic
• ditokous
• propaedeutic
• demarche

The competition was tough, none more-so than in the 2nd and 3rd place participants, Sean Conley and Alison Miller. Sean visualised many of the words by writing them with his finger on the back of the cardboard number tag which all entrants wore around their necks. He was eventually undone by the word "apotropaic". Alison displayed outstanding confidence and seemed to actually know every word in the preceding rounds before she was stumped by "venire", which means the bringing together of a group of people from which a jury will be picked.

The mood was tense and there were varied reactions to being knocked out. Rebecca Garthoff of Bangor, ME shed tears after she misspelt "minacious" in Round 6, whilst bubbly Kevin Roberts of Hagerstown, MD leaped off the stage whooping with his arms aloft when he spelled "seine" incorrectly.

Even though many were sweating under the bright lights and pressure, some youngsters found time for humour.

"Can I have a lifeline please? I'd like to call a friend" joked Amy Bitely, using the familiar line from the television game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?".

There were other moments of humour when a crowd member held aloft a placard stating "Can you spell ESPN?" and there were giggles when Jacob Norton asked the pronouncer to be more specific in the language of origin of his word "gitano". When Dr Alex Cameron answered "Spanish", Jacob intelligently retorted "American Spanish or Castillian Spanish?". However, the further information was of no consequence as the Michigan lad mis-spelled the word with a J.

First-round words were taken from a 3,500-word study booklet designed by Scripps Howard and from the word lists most sponsors use at their local bees. But for the final rounds, words are taken from Webster's Third New International Dictionary and its addenda, which contain more than 460,000 words. The contestants, most sponsored by their local newspapers, all won regional bees to qualify. Scripps Howard, the newspaper group based in Cincinnati, coordinates the national finals.

- Gareth Reagan