🇺🇸 Surya Kapu

Leucovorin, and the appeal

Leucovorin is a drug used to counter the side effects of cancer treatment. Kapu was ruled out on it during the 2022 competition, and his family lodged an appeal arguing that the judges had left out relevant information about the word's roots when he asked about its etymology, one of the questions every speller is entitled to ask.

The judges deliberated for roughly two hours before reinstating him, finding that there had been more directly relevant information available in the dictionary for one of the speller's questions. They framed the decision around what they called a belief in the bee's mission to inspire the exploration of words and celebrate academic achievement. He was given a new word for round seven of the Thursday night finals.

Why the reversal was extraordinary

Spelling bee eliminations are almost always final. A word is given, a speller spells it, a bell rings, and the competition moves on within seconds, which is why NPR covered the reinstatement as news in its own right on 2 June 2022 and Voice of America carried it internationally.

The grounds matter as much as the outcome. The bee's entitlements, definition, part of speech, language of origin, alternate pronunciations and use in a sentence, are not courtesies. They are part of the test, and the ruling accepted that if the information supplied is incomplete, the speller has not been given the examination the rules promise.

The two results

After the reinstatement he finished the 2022 competition tied for fifth, and Scripps profiled him on its own site as a 2022 finalist, speller number 223.

The following year he went further. ABC4 in Utah reported on 2 June 2023 that he had finished third at the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee, at fourteen. Two deep runs in consecutive years is the profile of a speller at the top of the national field, with or without the appeal that made him briefly famous.

Scripps runs a written test and several oral rounds before the televised finals, so a top-five finish and then a top-three finish in consecutive years means clearing the same set of filters twice at the highest level of the competition.

Where the reports differ

His home town is given differently depending on the outlet. NPR described him in 2022 as a thirteen-year-old from South Jordan, Utah; ABC4 in 2023 called him a Draper student. Both are suburbs in the Salt Lake City area, and this page reports the discrepancy rather than choosing between them.

What is consistent across the coverage is the rest: the word, the appeal, the reinstatement, the two finishes and his age in each year.

Where Surya Kapu is now

The sources used for this page end with the 2023 competition. They do not record where he went to school afterwards, whether he competed again, or what he is doing now.

Eligibility would have run out shortly in any case: spellers may not compete after the eighth grade, which is why the bee's best competitors have careers measured in three or four seasons. Kapu's ended with a third place and a precedent, which is more than most spellers leave behind.