Katharine Close, Champion Speller

The winner of the 81st annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is official. According to AP:

A 13-year-old New Jersey girl making her fifth straight appearance at the Scripps National Spelling Bee rattled off "ursprache" to claim the title of America's best speller on prime-time television Thursday night.

Katharine Close, an eighth-grader at the H.W. Mountz School in Spring Lake, New Jersey, is the first girl since 1999 to win the national spelling title.

Ursprache? I actually remember that word from linguistics, but that doesn't mean I would have won the bee. Far from it. I wouldn't have even gotten past the first round. Other words included "boswellize," "colluctation" and "flannelette"! And yes, that's really English. No joke.

Way to go, Katharine!

[Update: For a short time, the news was actually featured on the front page of CNN's website. Amazing.]