And you thought 'chauvinistic', 'diaphanous', 'lissom', 'loquacious' and 'ostentatious' are tough nuts to crack?
Meet two Class X students of Little Flower School, Jamshedpur, who can spell them to the letter.
Defeating 182 students from 91 schools from across the city, Anish Roy and G.S. Vishnu won the city finale of the 17th National Spellinc Competition - an inter-school spelling contest organised by Linc Pen and Plastics - at Michael John Auditorium in Bistupur on Thursday.
This was the third time Spellinc, which covers 11 cities with over 600 schools and 6.5 lakh students in Classes VIII-X, was organised in Jamshedpur.
Six teams, comprising two students each, from Little Flower School, Hill Top School, Loyola School, Jusco School South Park, Vidya Bharati Chinmaya Vidyalaya and JH Tarapore School qualified for the city finals, clearing a preliminary round of spellings and anagrams.
The final comprised six rounds - rapid fire, direct spelling, anagram, crossword, making words and picking the right word out of given choices.
Little Flower School will now compete in the nationals along with other city winners in Calcutta on May 14.
Anish and Vishnu together received a gift cheque of Rs 10,000, Kindle e-books and gift hampers worth Rs 5,000 each. First runner-up Hill Top received Kindle e-books and gift hampers worth Rs 5,000 each while second runner-up Loyola received the gift hampers only.
Organiser Ajay Agarwal said Spellinc promoted the habit of reading and writing as words were the basic foundation of any text. "We have kept the registration free. Also, we try to make it interesting so that more students can participate and understand the importance of spellings," said Agarwal, CEO of Infinity Events, Calcutta, which organised the contest in Jamshedpur.
Winner Vishnu said it was a great learning experience. "We never imagined that we would beat so many students. I am feeling excited. It was fabulous. We looked at spellings from a different angle, which helped us spell them correctly. But, it is just half the battle won. We have to prepare for the national-level competition now," the boy added.
