Super spellers are all set for overtime showdown
Come Saturday for these two, the talking ends and the words begin.
Spelling words.
Sophia Hoffman and Kush Sharma started something two weeks ago they didn’t get to finish. After 23 other contestants in the Jackson County Spelling Bee went out, Sophia and Kush went toe to toe, vowel for vowel, etymology for etymology, for 47 more rounds.
They took each other’s best shot — and all the judges’ words.
Yeah, the bee ran out of words. That’s a first. So at 9 a.m. Saturday in Helzberg Auditorium at the Kansas City Central Library, after two weeks of national hoopla — actually, fallout from their marathon bout hit news outlets in places like India, Pakistan, England and Australia — Sophia, 11, a Lee’s Summit fifth-grader, and Kush, 13, a Kansas City seventh-grader, go back at it for the right to go to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in May in Washington, D.C.
Because of the “unprecedented attention” for this showdown, a large projection screen will be set up on the main floor of the library at 14 W. 10th St.
Scripps officials rejected a groundswell push on Twitter to “Send Them Both!”
“Unfortunately, there is no provision in the rules for a regional spelling bee ending in a tie,” Scripps spokesman Chris Kemper said.
Sophia and Kush have been cramming and studying, but it’s harder now because unlike for the regular bee they don’t have a list of possible words.
In the first go-around, Sophia spelled “mukhtar” and “bhalu.” Kush nailed “bobbejaan” and “zeitgeber.”
Hard words. Spell check puts a red line under all four, but at least Sophia and Kush knew they might be coming. For Saturday, they have no idea.
“It’s exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time,” Kush said. “We’re wondering how hard the words are going to be and where they’re coming from.”
Sophia’s mother, Ruth Hoffman, said: “The whole dictionary is up for grabs.”
Kansas City Public Library officials said they got 200 new words from Scripps and pulled 60 more from the dictionary.
“We’ve got to be ready for whatever,” said Crosby Kemper III, library director. “They could go 100 rounds.”
Sophia is getting help from her sister, Jordan Hoffman, 15. She won this thing three years straight from 2010 to 2012.
“She reads a lot and gives me words she sees,” Sophia said. “She’s helping me a lot.”
Kush knows all about Jordan’s three-peat, but says he won’t use that as an excuse if he loses.
So, Kush, how exactly is this fifth-grader hanging with you?
“That’s what my friends keep asking,” he said at Frontier School of Innovation. “She’s real smart. She scares me.”
These two like each other. They had not met previously, but when it was just the two up there, round after round for hours, they began to smile after a while and give each other high-fives.
So no matter the outcome Saturday, there’s not likely to be an ounce of schadenfreude.
What — schadenfreude? German word meaning pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.
Sophia spelled it on TV’s “Good Morning America.” Yes, that’s right, when the spelling prowess of most people wouldn’t get them wheelbarrowed to the curb, ABC ponied up round-trip air to New York and hotel for Sophia and Kush and their families.
Sophia, who attends Highland Park Elementary and wants to go into sports medicine someday, smiled bashfully when asked about the star treatment. Her classmates got to watch her on “Good Morning America.”
“It’s really been a lot of fun,” she said one evening this week before her ballet class. “It’s a great experience for both of us. If I don’t win, I’ll be excited for Kush.”
Kush, who wants to be a heart surgeon, said the same about Sophia. Recent days have been tiring, he said. Trying to prepare for the bee, and talking about the bee to media. He did an interview with a newspaper in Kolkata, India.
“It’s probably the same for Sophia,” he said. “We’re not really used to this.”
His father, A.K. Sharma, said he’s trying to help Kush get ready for Saturday.
“But all he has is an old, beat-up Webster’s dictionary,” Sharma said, before adding:
“They should have sent both kids.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2014 at 11:10 PM with the headline "Super spellers are all set for overtime showdown."