'Tristeza' trips up Buffalo Grove student in Scripps National Spelling Bee
Tristeza — a highly infectious and deadly disease of citrus trees — proved just as harmful to Aniket Nuthalapati's championship hopes in Thursday's semifinal rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
The 14-year-old from Buffalo Grove was one of 49 students from around the nation who advanced to the semifinals of the national spelling bee.
Aniket, an eighth-grade student at Aptakisic Junior High School, spelled his first word of the round correctly — osteitic, which means relating to or characterized by inflammation of the bone.
But he was eliminated on his second word of the semis by mistakenly spelling it “trystaesa.”
Like many of the contestants, Aniket seemed unfamiliar with the difficult word he'd been given. He asked for the definition and language of origin more than once, and used up nearly all of the two minutes allotted before attempting to spell tristeza as his parents watched nervously in the audience.
Aniket said afterward that at this level of competition, most contestants expect words they're unfamiliar with, so they count on determining the correct spelling through reason.
“It mainly comes from learning language patterns,” he added.
That's why he found it an unexpected bonus that he was familiar with the first word he was asked to spell Thursday, and knew he was going to advance to the next round as soon as he heard it.
The second word, tristeza, came into the English language from Latin via Portuguese. Aniket conceded Portuguese was among the languages with which he is least familiar.
Aniket said viewers of the semifinal rounds might be surprised to learn that the words in the written test that preceded it were even more difficult, and that no one got a perfect score.
Though spelling is the academic skill Aniket has been working on the longest — since at least the first grade — it's not the only one at which he excels. He's also recently been to the state history bowl, a Mathcounts competition and was captain of his school's Scholastic Bowl team.
His mother, Indira Kanala, said he's built up a confidence for such competitions that typically leaves his family members more nervous than he.
“He was relaxed and confident that he would get to the finals, but got a word he never saw before and got a little panicky,” Indira said. “He said later that he should have stayed calm.”
Back at his home school and district, everyone was impressed by his performance.
“We're pretty proud of him,” said Vickie Walter, public relations coordinator for Aptakisic-Tripp Elementary District 102. “The composure he had and the confidence was just amazing. Some of the classes watched and cheered him on. That was kind of exciting.”
According to spellingbee.com, Aniket enjoys volunteering with community service ventures, particularly Feed My Starving Children, an organization committed to feeding hungry children worldwide. He considers Mahatma Gandhi his role model.
The finals of the bee are tonight from 7 to 9 p.m.