Quick, spell the word "tautologous."
Don't have a clue? Don't worry; 13-year old Simola Nayak's got your back.
Nayak, a student at Henderson Middle School in DeKalb County, correctly spelled "tautologous" to win the 51st annual Georgia Association of Educators State Spelling Bee.
Nayak will represent Georgia in the Scripps National Spelling Bee Championships in Washington, D.C., May 27 through June 1. Victory brought booty: a first-place trophy, an all-expense-paid trip to the national championship, $1,000 from GAE, a 3G Kindle, a $100 Amazon gift card, a dictionary, an Amazon.com gift certificate, a one-year online subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica and a $100 U.S. savings bond.
Spelling bees are a point of pride for Nayak. Her father, Subrat Nayak, said his daughter has practiced for a half-hour to an hour each day since Christmastime. She reads frequently, and she looks up not only unfamiliar words but others that are similar to the unfamiliar word.
Her mother, Smita Nayak, said Simola has won school-wide spelling bees in the 5th and 7th grades and was the state runner-up last year, a position she happily relinquished to Andalib Malit Samandari of Renfroe Middle School.
Samandari, who won his own set of prizes, will go to Washington if Simola is not able to go. Smita Nayak said she and her daughter are excited about the trip.
Simola has never been to Washington and said she is looking forward to seeing the Smithsonian Museum and historic monuments.
If there is a spelling bee on television, however, she might be a bit conflicted. Simola watches the national spelling bee each year, listening for odd and new words.
"It seems like they are made up or something, but they aren't," she said.
One year, a contestant was asked to spell a word that meant using different words to say the same thing: "tautological."
Young Simola Nayak filed that word away for future reference.
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