Harini Logan San Antonio TX: Who Is The 2022 Spelling Bee Winner?

Harini Logan is a 14-year-old girl from San Antonio who won the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee. She won after a first-ever spell-off’ was required to determine a champion in the tense competition.

During the night of the Spelling Bee on Thursday, June 2, she defeated Vikram Raju, 12, of Denver, after their neck-and-neck competition necessitated tiebreaking lightning round to determine the winner, a first in the program’s history.

Harini received $50,000 from Scripps, as well as other cash prizes and Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica reference books. Vikram received a prize of $25,000 for coming in second place.

During the Bee’s much-debated multiple-choice vocabulary round, the eventual winner Harini was eliminated, then reinstated. She misspelt four times as Scripps’ most difficult words proved too much for her, as they did for Vikram, who also made four mistakes in the final stretch.

Then, in the bee’s first-ever lightning-round tiebreaker, she eventually defeated Vikram. The winning word in the competition was ‘moorhen,’ which is a small aquatic bird of the rail family.

After winning, Harini stated, “It’s my fourth time at the Bee, and this is just such a dream — and well, I’m just overwhelmed.”