Spelling Bee competition in epic tie

Kush Sharma, a seventh-grader at Frontier School of Innovation, and Sophia Hoffman, a fifth-grader at Highland Park Elementary, battled in Missouri county's annual spelling bee competition with both getting every word right.

Finally, the judges ran out of words and the contest between them will resume on March 8 for a spot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington. "We did not want to just go through the dictionary and give them more words. We feared that someone would get a word that was too easy while the other would get an extremely difficult word," said Mary Olive Thompson, outreach coordinator for Kansas City Public Library where the event was held. The original pool of 25 students was quickly whittled to just Sophia and Kush on Saturday.

Sophia and Kush burned through that list, as well as 20 other words organizers picked from the dictionary when they realized it was possible they might need more words, Thompson said.

"The officials were fatigued. The kids weren't tired. They were doing an amazing job," Thompson said.

Kush cannot remember exactly what word was the hardest for him to spell — something French that started with an "R". "I'm looking forward to seeing how far Sophia can push me and how far my skills can go," he said.

For Sophia, the most difficult word was 'schadenfreude', which is the enjoyment one gets from someone else's bad luck. Apparently she does not feel it. "Kush worked really hard. I wish we could both go (to the national competition)," Sophia said.