Englewood Cliffs student wins North Jersey Spelling Bee with sweet sound of 'bariolage'
PARAMUS — "Bariolage." Typically, the word is used by musicians to describe the special effect they achieve on a violin by rapidly alternating on open and stopped strings.
On Tuesday night, however, bariolage was the only obstacle separating eighth grader Lucas Ke of Englewood Cliffs from victory at the annual North Jersey Spelling Bee, after a four-hour competition with some of the county’s best spellers.
Ke, a first-timer at the bee, was up to the task, spelling the word perfectly to end a long night of wordplay.
“I was really nervous because after a certain point, it wasn’t about stuff that I knew,” Ke said after his victory. “I was pretty much guessing stuff.”
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The bee — held in person again after two years of remote competition due to COVID — brought together 53 local students from grades 3 to 8 at Bergen Community College in Paramus.
The evening started off simply enough, with words like "banana" and "penguin" easing the spellers into the competition. But as the night went on, the words became increasingly challenging: Could you, dear reader, handle "incogitant" (meaning thoughtless or inconsiderate) or "prelapsarian" (belonging to a time before humankind’s supposed departure from innocence or goodness)?
Aidan Kapadia, a sixth grader from Emerson, took second place after a finale that went 14 rounds, seven of them a faceoff among Ke, Kapadia and third-place finalist Dave Rampersad, a seventh grader from Paramus. Kapadia then went head to head with Ke for another seven rounds.
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“It was a balance between excitement and ecstasy and nervousness,” said Kapadia, who was competing in his second North Jersey bee.
Although Kapadia couldn’t say what he felt the hardest word of the night was, he did remember his favorite, chosen for its simplicity: "nene," a nearly extinct goose from Hawaii.
Ke, who said he didn’t study before the event, will now move on to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., to face spellers from all over the country. The event will be held May 30 to June 1.
“I’m pretty excited,” Ke said.
Stephanie Noda is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: noda@northjersey.com; Twitter: @snoda11
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey Spelling Bee 2023: Englewood Cliffs student is winner
