Jonnen Messer withstood a grueling four-hour contest with 38 rounds of words to win the 35th annual European PTA Spelling Bee. His last two winning words were "stalactite" and "Istanbul." The fifth-grader at Ramstein Intermediate School at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, surprised himself in earlier rounds by correctly spelling some tricky words. 

Photo credit: Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes