MUMBAI: The 78th Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship, which was held in Washington recently, will be aired on ESPN.

Anurag Kashyap, a 13-year-old expatriate emerged as the winner of the championship. The initial rounds and the final of the Spelling Bee Championship will be aired on ESPN on 14 - 15 June at 5:30 pm.

Kashyap, an eighth grader at Meadowbrook Middle School- Poway CA, beat 273 kids in the US to seal his win in the 19th round of the finals.

He is a second generation NRI and hails from the sate of Bihar. He correctly spelt appoggiatura, a musical grace note to win the ultimate anxiety fest for brainy school kids.

Apart from accolades and recognition, Kashyap won a total of $22,000 in cash plus $5000 college scholarship, a set of Encyclopedia and a $1000 savings bond among other prizes.

He overcame another Indian American kid Samir Patel who stood second in the championship. Its worthwhile to note that kids of Indian origin have won four of the last six and five of the last eight Spelling Bee Championships.

Spelling bee (www.spellingbee.com) is US largest and longest-running educational promotion, administered by The E.W. Scripps Company and over 260 sponsors in the US, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, The Bahamas, and American Samoa. Their headquarters office in Cincinnati, Ohio, coordinates the national finals, enrolls sponsors, and produces word lists and study materials.

Each of the 260 sponsors organises a spelling bee program in their community, usually with the cooperation of area school officials. The champion of the sponsors final spelling bee advances to the finals in Washington, DC. The words are selected from the 2005 Paideia (official study booklet) and from Books I and II of the 2005 Sponsor Bee Guides (word lists most sponsors use at their final bees). The only complete source for words is Websters Third New International Dictionary and its Addenda Section, Merriam-Webster, which contains over 470,000 word entries.