Bookworm, 13, latest reality TV star as contest spells unlikely success

The 13-year-old bookworm from New Jersey beat a determined challenge from 274 other young hopefuls to win America's National Spelling Bee Championship in Washington DC by listing the letters of "ursprache", a German word meaning language, in the correct order.

Her remarkable talent for spelling some of the trickiest words in the dictionary also earned her the unlikely title of the country's newest reality television star alongside the $42,000 (22,300) top prize.

Such was the buzz about the increasingly popular spelling bee this year that the ABC network decided to broadcast the final stages live for the first time to a prime-time audience of millions. And an online gambling site reported that punters had wagered at least $70,000 on the outcome.

"I couldn't believe it," Katharine said of the moment "ursprache" came up in the nail-biting championship round, in which she and runner-up Finola Mei Hwa Hackett of Canada had already correctly spelled the words " tmesis" and "kundalini", among others.

"I knew that I knew how to spell the word and I was just in shock. I'd reviewed it with my parents so I knew it."

In the final round Finola, 14, slipped up on another word of German origin, "weltschmerz", meaning world-weariness, which she incorrectly spelled with a "v". It allowed Katharine, in her fifth year in the competition, to become the first female champion in seven years.

She delivered the letters of the winning word with confidence, standing at the microphone with both hands in her pockets, which she insisted was because she was clutching a good luck pendant rather than any attempt to look cool.

The competition also delivered moments of drama, such as when Saryn Hooks, a 14-year-old from North Carolina, was eliminated despite correctly spelling the word "icteritious", an adjective describing a jaundiced colour. "I had kind of numbed myself at that point because I didn't want to cry on stage," said Saryn, who was reinstated when the judges realised their error, and she went on to finish third. "I didn't know the word and I guessed, so I just thought I was wrong."

She was luckier than Jeremiah Weaver, a ten-year-old from Michigan, who provided one of the funniest moments of the final rounds when he asked the announcer, "Can you spell that?" when faced with the word "xiphias", a species of swordfish.

"Not right now," was the reply.

Such incidents made the competition surprisingly compelling viewing, and seemed to justify ABC's decision to turn it into a live television spectacle, despite some complaints that the regular commercial breaks disrupted its flow.

"We're living in a television age. The spelling bee has been shaped by TV more than ever," said James Maguire, author of American Bee, an analysis of the competition and its so-called word nerds.

"It does make the bee a bit more showbiz and I realise it is more stage managed than before."

Meanwhile, Simon Noble, chief executive of an internet bookmaker, pinnaclesports.com, reported that he had taken numerous bets on an event that even the Las Vegas bookmakers would not touch, given ethical reservations about gambling on children's activities. "We scratched our heads and asked, 'Is it something we can do?'" he said.

Mr Noble said the company decided to offer odds only on "generic, fun" categories rather than specific individuals.

For instance, punters could get odds of 4-7 that the winner would be wearing glasses - a poor bet, it turned out, given that Katharine Close does not.

Event organisers were not impressed. "I'm speechless," said Paige Kimble, the director, and 1981 champion. "I think I've seen everything, but, wow, I was not aware that was happening. I guess it's one of the side-effect consequences of popularity."

In an age of computer games and the internet, the popularity of the 81-year-old contest remains impressively high, with a record number of competitors, 275, taking part in this year's final rounds.

Mr Maguire says a number of recent books and plays about spelling bees have fuelled interest.

The most famous is Spellbound, a 2002 documentary that followed eight teenagers as they attempted to win the 1999 competition, and last year a Broadway musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, won two Tony awards.

A children's film, Akeelah and the Bee, was released in April about an 11-year-old girl from Los Angeles who tries to rise above her street-gang background to try to win the national competition.