They say the third time’s a charm.
For, Raj Singh of Santa Fe, the fourth time is proving to be the charm because he is now heading to the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee in May.
He won the Santa Fe County Spelling Bee three straight years. Each year, he came in second at the state spelling bee. This year, it appeared he was the runner-up, yet again.
And Raj can thank his father, Ganesh, for ensuring his son would compete at the national level.
After Raj, 13, had apparently come in second at the New Mexico State Spelling Bee in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago, he said he felt “empty inside.” Ganesh described Raj’s experience as traumatic.”
But a few days after the competition, Ganesh looked up the word his son had allegedly misspelled: “Mesophilic.”
Raj spelled the word “mesophyllic” correctly. That’s a homonym for “mesophilic.” In other words, it’s a word that sounds exactly like another word, but it’s spelled differently and means something else.
Ganesh told spelling bee officials about the homonym, and after much anxious waiting over two days, was told Raj would be declared the co-winner of the state spelling bee, along with Hannah Evans of Albuquerque. Here’s how the goof went down.
The judges did not give the definitions for the word “mesophilic,” Ganesh Singh said. As a spelling bee rule, for a homonym, the pronouncer has to give all the information in advance and tell the speller that the word he is being asked to spell has a homonym.
Raj also did not ask for a definition. He asked the language of origin, that the word be used in a sentence and whether there were any alternate pronounciations.
As a result of the new information from Raj’s father, Hannah and Raj now will both go to Washington, D.C. and, as Raj puts it, “eat ribs with Obama.”
The trip to the nation’s capital, of course, means much more than dining with the president.
About one to two hours a day of spelling practice go into preparation for the Bee, Raj said.
We’re talking about essentially memorizing a dictionary. Typically the students memorize some 4,000 words. But then judges go to “challenge words” that are not on a list from which students prepare.
In addition to committing words to memory, there are other techniques used by Raj and all the kids who reach the national Bee. It helps to know what prefixes and suffixes mean, word origins and Latin and Greek roots, he said.
The competition itself is fierce. Most people have never heard of a lot of the words that kids are asked to spell at a Bee. “It’s like now or never,” Raj said of the spelling bees in which he’s competed, especially in the last few rounds.
The toughest one Raj ran into in Albuquerque? “Carauba.”
See if you can find that word in a dictionary. Raj, a seventh-grader at the Academy for Technology and the Classics, has encountered newfound celebrity status among his classmates.
“They come up to me and ask to spell things,” he said.
The attention is nice, but sometimes it gets annoying, especially if they ask Raj to spell made-up words, he said.
School Principal Eileen Montoya said Raj exudes confidence, a helpful trait for any competition.
“You’re a celebrity now. You’re famous,” she told him.
