Awesome six-year-old is youngest-ever Scripps Spelling Bee contestant
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- Amy Swales
- Published
Need some motivation to get through the week?
If so, the news that a six-year-old is making history in one of America’s oldest spelling competitions should give you a swift boot in the right direction.
Edith Fuller was just five when she smashed the regionals in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in March – beating more than 50 competitors with a string of 37 correctly spelt words including ‘Weimaraner’, ‘colloquial’, ‘Panglossian’, ‘picaresque’, ‘sarsaparilla’, ‘euthanasia’ and ‘Croesus’.
Yeah, we'd definitely struggle with a couple of those.
While there’s no minimum age, children can enter up to the eighth grade (year 9 in the UK), meaning she won out against children as old as 15, becoming the youngest-ever competitor to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee – a countrywide spelling competition extremely popular in America.
Having had a birthday since the regionals, Fuller was six when she took part in the Washington rounds 30 May.
Though she correctly spelt ‘tapas’ and ‘nyctinasty’ correctly, she didn’t pass a written test and thus hasn’t made the final rounds.
However, she has a list of excellent hobbies outside of spelling to occupy herself with, including running around, climbing trees and catching bugs (she hopes to become a zoology professor).
The annual competition is a Big Deal in America, and Valerie Miller, a spokeswoman for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, said Edith’s fame had spread throughout the land and she’d amassed a few fans already, telling ABC News: “They have autograph books called bee keepers, and everybody wants to get Edith's autograph.
“Everybody wants to meet her.”
Oh, and her favourite words? According to the Scripps website, they’re ‘refrigerator’ and ‘escalator’.
New hero: found.
Main image: Rex Features