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)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.

Iran had no immediate reaction to the news, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.

Meanwhile Monday, Iran called for pro-government demonstrators to head to the streets in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”

Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

He added: “The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”

Iran through country's parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.

More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 496 of the dead were protesters and 48 were with security forces.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.

Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown. Protesters flooded the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.

In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets of the capital empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

“Dear parents, in view of the enemy’s plan to increase the level of naked violence and the decision to kill people, ... refrain from being on the streets and gathering in places involved in violence, and inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country,” the text warned.

The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Nikhinson reported from aboard Air Force One.

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 10, 2026. (UGC via AP)