Faizan Zaki overcomes a shocking, self-inflicted flub and wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Faizan Zaki's enthusiasm for spelling nearly got the better of him. Ultimately, his joyful approach made him the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.

The favorite entering the bee after his runner-up finish last year — during which he never misspelled a word in a conventional spelling round, only to lose a lightning-round tiebreaker that he didn't practice for — the shaggy-haired Faizan wore the burden of expectations lightly, sauntering to the microphone in a black hoodie and spelling his words with casual glee.

Throughout Thursday night's finals, the 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, looked like a champion in waiting. Then he nearly threw it away. But even a shocking moment of overconfidence couldn't prevent him from seizing the title of best speller in the English language.

With the bee down to three spellers, Sarvadnya Kadam and Sarv Dharavane missed their words back-to-back, putting Faizan two words away from victory. The first was “commelina,” but instead of asking the requisite questions — definition, language of origin — to make sure he knew it, Faizan let his showman's instincts take over.

“K-A-M,” he said, then stopped himself. “OK, let me do this. Oh, shoot!”

“Just ring the bell,” he told head judge Mary Brooks, who obliged.

“So now you know what happens,” Brooks said, and the other two spellers returned to the stage.

Later, standing next to the trophy with confetti at his feet, Faizan said: “I'm definitely going to be having nightmares about that tonight.”

Even pronouncer Jacques Bailly tried to slow Faizan down before his winning word, “eclaircissement,” but Faizan didn't ask a single question before spelling it correctly, and he pumped his fists and collapsed to the stage after saying the final letter.

The bee celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, and Faizan may be the first champion who's remembered more for a word he got wrong than one he got right.

“I think he cared too much about his aura,” said Bruhat Soma, Faizan’s buddy who beat him in the “spell-off” tiebreaker last year.

Faizan had a more nuanced explanation: After not preparing for the spell-off last year, he overcorrected, emphasizing speed during his study sessions.

Although Bruhat was fast last year when he needed to be, he followed the familiar playbook for champion spellers: asking thorough questions, spelling slowly and metronomically, showing little emotion. Those are among the hallmarks of well-coached spellers, and Faizan had three coaches: Scott Remer, Sam Evans and Sohum Sukhantankar.

None of them could turn Faizan into a robot on stage.

“He's crazy. He's having a good time, and he's doing what he loves, which is spelling,” Evans said.

Said Zaki Anwar, Faizan's father: “He's the GOAT. I actually believe that. He's really good, man. He's been doing it for so long, and he knows the dictionary in and out.”

After last year's bee had little drama before an abrupt move to the spell-off, Scripps tweaked the competition rules, giving judges more leeway to let the competition play out before going to the tiebreaker. The nine finalists delivered.

During one stretch, six spellers got 26 consecutive words right, and there were three perfect rounds during the finals. The last time there was a single perfect round was the infamous 2019 bee, which ended in an eight-way tie.

Sarv, an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, who ultimately finished third, would have been the youngest champion since Nihar Janga in 2016. He has three years of eligibility remaining.

The most poised and mature of the final three, Sarvadnya — who's from Visalia, California — ends his career as the runner-up. He's 14 and in the eighth grade, which means he has aged out of the competition. It's not a bad way to go out, considering that Faizan became just the fifth runner-up in a century to come back and win, and the first since Sean Conley in 2001.

Including Faizan, whose parents emigrated from southern India, 30 of the past 36 champions have been Indian American, a run that began with Nupur Lala’s victory in 1999, which was later featured in the documentary “Spellbound.” In honor of the centennial, dozens of past champions attended this year and signed autographs for spellers, families and bee fans.

With the winner’s haul of $52,500 added to his second-place prize of $25,000, Faizan increased his bee earnings to $77,500. His big splurge with his winnings last year? A $1,500 Rubik’s cube with 21 squares on each side. This time, he said he’d donate a large portion of his winnings to charity.

The bee began in 1925 when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington. For the past 14 years, Scripps has hosted the competition at a convention center just outside the nation's capital, but the bee returns downtown next year to Constitution Hall, a nearly century-old concert venue near the White House.

Faizan has been spelling for more than half his life. He competed in the 2019 bee as a 7-year-old, getting in through a wild-card program that has since been discontinued. He qualified again in 2023 and made the semifinals before last year's second-place finish.

“One thing that differentiates him is he really has a passion for this. In his free time, when he's not studying for the bee, he's literally looking up archaic, obsolete words that have no chance of being asked,” Bruhat said. “I don't think he cares as much about the title as his passion for language and words.”

Faizan had no regrets about showing that enthusiasm, even though it nearly cost him.

“No offense to Bruhat, but I think he really took the bee a little too seriously,” Faizan said. “I decided to have fun with this bee, and I did well, and here I am.”

The story has been updated to correct the number of consecutive words spelled correctly by six spellers to 26, from 28, and to remove a reference to Nupur Lala being among the past champions who attended.

Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.

With the trophy in the foreground, Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, competes in the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, reacts as he competes in the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, reacts as he wins the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, holds the trophy after winning the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

E.W. Scripps Company president and CEO Adam Symson presents the trophy to Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, the winner of the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

E.W. Scripps Company president and CEO Adam Symson presents the trophy to Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, the winner of the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

E.W. Scripps Company president and CEO Adam Symson presents the trophy to Faizan Zaki, 13, of Dallas, the winner of the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

NEW YORK (AP) — Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is set to make his first appearance Monday in an American courtroom on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him to New York.

Maduro and his wife are expected to appear at noon before a judge for a brief, but required, legal proceeding that will likely kick off a prolonged legal fight over whether he can be put on trial in the U.S.

The couple were transported under armed guard early Monday from the Brooklyn jail where they've been detained to a Manhattan courthouse.

The trip was swift. A motorcade carrying Maduro left jail around 7:15 a.m. and made its way to a nearby athletic field, where Maduro slowly made his way to a waiting helicopter. The chopper flew across New York harbor and landed at a Manhattan heliport, where Maduro, limping, was loaded into an armored vehicle.

A few minutes later, the law enforcement caravan was inside a garage at the courthouse complex, just around the corner from the one where Donald Trump was convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person accused of a crime — including the right to a trial by a jury of regular New Yorkers. But he'll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

Maduro’s lawyers are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of state.

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriegaunsuccessfully tried the same defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.

Venezuela’s new interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she also struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with President Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base. Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that it would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing " oil quarantine."

Trump suggested Sunday that he wants to extend American power further in the western hemisphere.

Speaking aboard Air Force One, he called Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, "a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long.”

He called on Venezuela's Rodriguez to provide “total access” to her country, or else face consequences.

A 25-page indictment made public Saturday accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

It was unclear as of Sunday whether Maduro had hired a U.S. lawyer yet.

He and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.

While the indictment against Maduro says Venezuelan officials worked directly with the Tren de Aragua gang, a U.S. intelligence assessment published in April, drawing on input from the intelligence community's 18 agencies, found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.

Maduro, his wife and his son — who remains free — are charged along with Venezuela's interior and justice minister, a former interior and justice minister and Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, an alleged Tren de Aragua leader who has been criminally charged in another case and remains at large.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included a local drug boss' killing in Caracas, the indictment said.

Maduro’s wife is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between “a large-scale drug trafficker” and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office, resulting in additional monthly bribes, with some of the money going to Maduro's wife, according to the indictment.

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, Darlene Superville aboard Air Force One and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

An armored vehicle carrying Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores arrives at Manhattan Federal Court, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

An armored vehicle carrying Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores arrives at Manhattan Federal Court, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

Reward posters are passed out at a gathering celebrating the deposing of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, in Katy, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

FILE - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro places his hand over his hear while talking to high-ranking officers during a military ceremony on his inauguration day for a third term, in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)