A girls’ state school became champion of The Times Spelling Bee yesterday as dozens of children faced one of the most gruelling challenges of their lives.
The atmosphere was electric as Newport Girls’ High School from Shropshire stormed to victory, winning by just one point.
The competitors were cheered on by hundreds of friends, classmates, parents and teachers, who waved flags, banners and posters — with one supporter blowing on a vuvuzela.
Words including coiffure, foible and dilettante floored contestants during the three-hour event.
Forty teams of 11 and 12-year-olds from around the country battled it out in the Grand Final of the championship, at the Institute of Education in Central London.
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The winning school was last to perform in the second round. Words they spelt correctly included zephyr, oxymoron, bellicose and cantilever.
Mrinalini Chakrabarty, one of the team, said afterwards: “It was phenomenal and nerve-racking.” The girls practised every lunchtime. They win gold medals, a day guest-editing the Young Times section of The Times, laptop computers for themselves and their school and dictionaries.
All teams held up well at first, but started to topple 10 minutes in by misspelling words including facet, calibre and decrepit.
The last few contestants took a while to be knocked out in the first round, and it took 15 rounds to reduce it to one child standing. Competitors correctly spelt maelstrom, ubiquitous, perambulator and cataclysm. Evanescent did for the penultimate player in round one,
In the quick-fire challenge, the children astounded the audience by correctly rattling off words such as spontaneous, consequential, credulous, specious.
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Dick and Dom, the children’s television presenters, whipped up the audience into a frenzy during the event. It was won last year by St Martin’s, a boys’ school from Northwood, North London, which was also in the final this year.
More than 1,000 schools from every part of the United Kingdom entered the championship, which is in its second year. They were whittled down in 106 local heats to the 10 finallists.