A Great Neck North Middle School student finished fourth place at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The final day of the competition, which took place on May 29, saw Brian Liu advance to the 17th round.
Liu, 13, opened the day by successfully spelling “infula,” which describes the ribbons on a Catholic bishop’s headdress. He and the nine other finalists advanced to the next round, where he correctly identified “cerulean” as the blue color of the sky.
The top six competitors were locked in a stalemate for a few rounds, with Liu acing “penannular” (an incomplete circle) and “reseda” (a type of flowering plant).
Kyah, a type of Indian partridge, was the word that tripped him up in the end.
Harini Murali, 13, from Edison, N.J., and Aishwarya Kallakuri, 14, from Charlotte, N.C., fell in the same round to join Liu in a tie for fourth place.
Faizan Zaki, 13, ended up winning the competition. The student from Dallas, Texas, spelled “éclaircissement,” meaning an enlightening explanation, to put himself over the top. The runner-up was Visalia, California’s Sarvadnya Kadam, who was felled by “Uaupés,” the name of a river tributary in South America.
The spelling bee, celebrating its centennial this year, first occurred in 1925.
According to Scripps, this year’s bee featured 243 competitors from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Department of Defense Schools in Europe. International entrants were also welcomed from the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria. This year’s bee was held in National Harbor, Maryland, outside of the nation’s capital.
On Monday, Liu was greeted by his classmates with a “hero’s welcome,” according to a Facebook post from Great Neck Public Schools. Students lined North Middle School’s walkway, cheering and holding signs with some of the words he bested during the contest.
“Our entire school community is extremely proud of Brian,” said Brendan Nelson, the school’s principal. “He’s inspired students and teachers alike.”
“We take a lot of pride in trying to cultivate the love of language, the love of literature,” he said, “Brian’s achievements and journey embody those values in an extraordinary way.”
Students from New York have won the bee’s top prize a total of five times. The most recent of these was Corning’s Jairam Hathwar in 2016. Smithtown’s Olivia Lipiec, 14, also represented Long Island in this year’s contest. The 8th grader from Accompsett Middle School tied for 202nd place.
Liu had previous experience in the national spelling bee, qualifying in 2023, tying for 23rd place that year.
North Middle has now had three consecutive years with a student being sent to the national competition. In 2024, then-sixth grader Victor Yang made it to the fourth round before being undone by the word “rivel,” meaning wrinkled or shriveled.
Liu and the two other students he tied with will each take home about $5,800 in prize money from the competition.
