Boy with city roots spells success

A 13-year-old student from New York, whose parents hail from Hyderabad, has become the latest Indian American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee - an annual spelling bee competition in the US.A Eighth-grader Arvind Mahankali beat out other Scripps National Spelling Bee contestants by spelling "knaidel" correctly. "I know this. I got this," he told CNN's "Early Start" on Friday morning, recalling how he confidently steadied himself before enunciating every letter in the Yiddish word of German origin meaning dumpling. When he uttered the final letter, the audience erupted in wild applause.

The 13-year-old is feeling good even though he knows he won't be able to compete again since there's a limit on contestants beyond the eighth-grade. "Next year I'll try to go somewhere in the Math Olympiad and the Physics Olympiad," he said.

The Bayside Hills, New York, teen, who wants to become a physicist, finished third in two previous national bees. He was eliminated after misspelling words with German roots. Pranav Sivakumar, a 13-year-old from Tower Lakes, Illinois, finished second. He missed on "cyanophycean." Then Mahankali nailed "toko- noma" and "knaidel,"

Eleven million schoolchildren participated in preliminaries leading up to the national contest this week. Of those, 281 children made the trip to Oxon Hill, Maryland, outside Washington, for the national bee. Eleven spellers made it through to the finals.