American eighth grader Kayla Tenney Villalobos, who took the queen bee title at a nail-biting spelling competition in Idaho on Feb. 11, gained the winning edge when she correctly spelled the word “Taiwan.”

In addition to hoisting the championship trophy at the 20th North Idaho Spelling Bee, Villalobos also won a cash prize of US$1,000 (NT$30,388), a one-year subscription to the United States’ online versions of Encyclopedia Britannica and Webster’s Dictionary, and a ticket to Washington to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee later this year.

“I’m kind of in shock,” Villalobos said to the press after she scored the win with her correct spelling of “Taiwan.”

“I didn’t expect to win, she said. “I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll get top 10.'”

Among the 20 other competitors from the Idaho Panhandle, Villalobos’s strongest rival was sixth grader Erik Brunner, who was neck and neck with her in Round 16 amid a series of misspellings and finished in second place.

Under the competition rules, bees are entitled to a shot at redemption in the next round if all the active participants misspell words.

In the 18th round, Brunner missed another word, which put Villalobos through to Round 19. When she was asked to spell “Taiwan,” she made the right call and thus took the queen bee title.

She is a student at the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy, which has produced three other winners in previous editions of the competition.

The 20th North Idaho Spelling Bee was sponsored by the American state’s Idaho Character Foundation, whose founder Dan Pinkerton told CNA said that “Taiwan” is not considered a very difficult word to spell.

In a phone interview, he said all the words are randomly selected, and those that challenged the competitors most included “parlay” and “tawdry.”

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel