Indian origin kids marked the National Spelling Bee, a spelling competition held in the United States of America with all the first 3 positions being bagged by Indian American kids Snigdha Nandipati, Stuti Mishra and Arvind Mahankali. “Guetapens,” a French-derived word that means ambush, snare or trap was the winning stroke for 14 year old, Snigdha Nandipati who won the 85 ^th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night held at the Gaylord National, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, US. She, along with Stuti Mishra and Arvind Mahankali, all Indian Americans’ secured the first, second and third positions respectively in the famed Spelling Bee. “I knew it. I’d seen it before”, Nandipati said of the winning word. She added, “I just wanted to ask everything I could before I started spelling”, when asked why did she ask for the meaning and the origin of the word if she knew it already. Nandipati whose roots hail from South India, was the semifinalist last year and had been taking part in Spelling Bees since she was 4 years old. She plays the Violin and is fluent in Telugu. The first runner up Stuti Mishra, also an Indian American finished second after misspelling “schwarmerei” – which means excessive, unbridled enthusiasm. Arvind Mahankali, 12 year old, coming in third pledged to return to the competition. He was the youngest of the nine finalists and had secured the third position in the competition last year too. Nandipati’s prize haul includes $30,000 in cash, a trophy, a $2,500 savings bond, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works from the Encyclopedia Britannica and an online language course. —————————– News Source: HuffingtonPost.com, Photo by Associated Press —————————–