“The spell-off results are in,” Jacques Bailly, the official pronouncer for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, said with a soft smile on his face. Ishaan Gupta, 12, and Shrey Parikh, 14, had just finished a whirlwind round, where each was tasked with spelling as many words as they could in 90 seconds — from “torrone” (an Italian nougat) to “cywyddau” (the plural of cywydd, a Welsh poetry form). “Shrey, during the spell-off, you correctly spelled a total of 32 words.