By Jessica Wehrman
Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON — Pratyush Buddiga, a Colorado seventh-grader who was inspired by an earlier champion, correctly spelled "prospicience," on Thursday to win the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.

Buddiga, 13, who attends Mountain Ridge Middle School, a public school in Colorado Springs, had a calm demeanor throughout the bee, but his voice quavered slightly as he spelled his final word, "prospicience," which means foresight.

With a quiet presence on stage and a wry sense of humor off, Buddiga spelled the words on the back of his placard with his finger. He said he learned the trick by watching Sean Conley, last year's spelling champ. The trick, he said, worked.

Unlike Rebecca Sealfon, the 1997 exuberant winner from New York City who prompted Buddiga to begin spelling seriously, Buddiga was a calm champ, disbelieving.

"I can't believe I really won," he said. "This is the fulfillment of a dream I've had for a long time."

He said his goal entering the bee was to place in the top five, and that he was intimidated by the champs who were returning for a second year.

"A lot of repeaters did very well last year who were here, so he was very scared of them," said Rekha Buddiga, his mother.

Buddiga was a third-grader when he watched Sealfon correctly spell "euonym" to win the bee, jumping in triumph. "She looked so happy when she won the thing," he said. "I thought maybe I wanted to try it out, but I was in the third grade."

He lost that first year, and his school didn't have a bee during fourth grade. But within a few years, he was doing better in the bees, and this year he qualified for the national bee.

Among the other words Buddiga spelled correctly were "paraclete," which means an advocate; "amole," which means a part of a plant possessing detergent properties; "oubliette," which means a dungeon opening; and "troching," meaning the small point of a stag's antler.

His sponsoring newspaper was the Rocky Mountain News.

It was a quick final after a day of long spelling times and tough words. When three of five spellers were eliminated in round nine, only Buddiga and Steven Nalley, 14, of Starkville, Miss., remained.

Nalley misspelled "morigeration," which means servile obedience. As he went to the back of the stage, Nalley shook hands with Buddiga and their eyes met in silent congratulations.

"I knew from round four he had it," Nalley said afterward of Buddiga. "He had the skills, he had the confidence. He would just not go down."

Buddiga was greeted with a loud round of applause when he approached the microphone. He shut his eyes in nervousness, listened to the word, asked his routine line of questions, and nailed it.

Ninety spellers made it to the second day of competition. To get there, they had to survive a written test of 25 words — the first written test in bee history. Under bee rules, those who misspelled the least number of words on the written test could proceed to the second day.

One audience favorite, Catherine Miller, 12, of Niskayuna, N.Y., evoked some of the more comic moments of the day, with her joyous leaps across stage after correct spellings and responding to some words by sighing "hmmmm," seemingly stumped.

Bee competitors, who range from age 9 to 15, included 167 public school students, 29 parochial school students, 27 home-schooled students, 26 private school students and one charter school student.

Despite the tough words, the competition was friendly, with many spellers rooting for their buddies.

As the winner, Buddiga will receive, among other prizes, a $12,000 cash prize, an engraved trophy, a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Great Books of the Western World, a $1,000 U.S. savings bond and a reference library from Merriam-Webster.

May 31, 2002

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