Speller 264, Tejas Muthusamy, said he put a lot of pressure on himself – he wanted to do as well as he did last year, when he made it to the finals and tied for eighth place.
“I wanted to experience it again this year,” said Tejas, a sixth grader from Glen Allen, Virginia. This is his second bee.
But Tejas is sanguine about the experience this year. He just doesn’t want to get out on a word he knows, he said.
“I won’t be upset if I miss on a word that’s hard, that’s out of the blue,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where I place, as long as I get out on a respectable word.”
Tejas spent a lot of time memorizing last year, but said this year that he studied more roots.
“I probably won’t forget them because they’re little bits of information,” he said.
Tejas stood with his head down and his hands clasped as he listened to information about his word, "Tartarean," which means of or relating to the infernal regions of ancient mythology : relating to or inhabiting hell. He misspelled and was out.