This Southern State Is Home To The Most Scripps National Spelling Bee Champions

Hint: It is not the home state of the 2023 winner.

Dev Shah, a 14-year-old from Largo, Florida, won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee by spelling the word “psammophile”. It’s an impressive feat, considering most of us have never seen or heard the word before, let alone have the ability to spell it in a high-stakes, high-pressure competition. Shah is the third Florida resident to take the top prize, but Florida isn’t even close to having a record number of excellent spellers. That particular competition is dominated by Texas.

Scripps National Spelling Bee has been crowning champion spellers since 1925 and a whopping 15 winners have come from the Lone Star State, Austin’s local NBC affiliate, KXAN, reports. That’s according to data compiled by Bet Texas who looked at all the winners from the competition’s 95-year run hail. Texas is the biggest producer of top grade spellers by far. The closest runners up are Ohio with nine winners and Pennsylvania with seven spelling champs.

Other Southern states have produced a decent crop of winners, too. Five champions hailed from Tennessee, while Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia have each produced two National Spelling Bee winners. Thanks to Shah’s prodigious spelling, Florida now has three champions.

As for the 2023 competition,Texans had a good chance at winning this year’s challenge, too, as there were 21 Texans in the running. However, it makes sense that a Floridian would know the word “psammophile”.  According to Merriam-Webster, it is a noun used, among other things, to describe organisms that prefer to live in sandy environments.

For more Southern Living news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on Southern Living.