Boy Wins Bee With 'Autochthonous'

A 14-year-old Indiana boy mastered the word "autochthonous" to win the National Spelling Bee Thursday, out-dueling 264 rivals for the title.

David Tidmarsh covered his face with his hands, overwhelmed by the win. Moments earlier, he had hidden himself behind his placard, then lowered it to show tears in his eyes, after nailing "gaminerie" to make the final round.

"I was just hoping that I got a word I studied," David said. His chances were excellent — he spent months going through the dictionary.

David, an eighth-grader at Edison Intermediate Center, is now one of 77 people in the bee's history to emerge as the finest in the field.

He told The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler Friday, "I have seen other people win both on television and in person, but I've never actually thought about what it would be like to win. And I guess I just couldn't believe it. It was just really surreal."

He won the top-prize package of $12,000 and an engraved cup from the bee, plus another $5,000, encyclopedias, a $1,000 savings bonds and a reference library from other sponsors.

The money will go to "probably something like college or maybe little bits of charity, things like that," he says.

His path to victory went through words such as "arete," "sophrosyne," "sumpsimus," and "serpiginous."

"Usually about five people in front of me, my palms will start to sweat a little," David said. "And then when I have to step up to the microphone, I will just start, you know, hyperventilating."

His winning strategy was to write the words out with the tip of his finger. He says, "I think I learn better when I see things in print or maybe even write something out or type it out. So I think writing it on my placard helped me a lot because it helped me to envision the word in my mind instead of just thinking about it."

In the end, he defeated Akshay Buddiga, a 13-year-old from Colorado Springs, Colo., who had collapsed on stage rounds earlier from lightheadedness but returned to almost win the final.

Within a few seconds of his collapse, Akshay gathered himself, stood up and, to the amazement of the judges, immediately started spelling his word: "alopecoid."

He got it perfectly, drawing a standing ovation. Akshay went back to his chair, looking uncomfortable, when a Bee employee came to escort him off stage for a quick medical checkup.

David says, "I never saw anything like it before. But I thought it was pretty amazing that he could actually get back up and spell it correctly."

As the crowd buzzed and ESPN's national television audience watched, the next speller approached the microphone, and the competition resumed.

Akshay, from Colorado Springs, returned for the next round, looking shaky, and correctly spelled "lyophilize." His big brother, Pratyush, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee two years ago.

At the start of the third and final day of the bee, 46 children were still in the running. But in the fifth round, 20 spellers were led off stage after mistakes. Sixth-round words eliminated 11 more, cutting the field to 15.

The field began with 265 spellers who had emerged from at least 9 million children who participated in local bees.

Courtesy reigns at the bee. Every spelling, right or wrong, brought strong applause, and some of those on stage showed they were pulling for their competitors. Each mistake drew a collective groan from the audience.

For the first time, spellers faced a strict time limit of two minutes per word, followed by a final 30-second period with a countdown clock, although they could claim one minute of bonus time once during the competition.

Among those eliminated was 10-year-old Samir Patel, who was considered a favorite and had been deemed a force to be reckoned with by last year's winner, Sai Gunturi. Samir, who tied for third in 2003, tried to break down "corposant," at one point asking the pronouncers, "Am I on the right track?"

But the fifth-grader from Colleyville, Texas, missed it by two letters.

The spellers range in age from 9 to 15, and from grades four to eight.