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Shelton girl takes top place in annual bee

Published in "New Haven Register" on March 24, 2006
by Ann DeMatteo, Assistant Metro Editor

Dhanya Tadipatri continued a family tradition Thursday when she bested 21 of her peers to win the New Haven Register Spelling Bee, making words like “floreted,” “frondescence,” “gaufrette” and “perlingual” seem easy to spell.

“I guess it just came. I practiced a lot,” the softspoken Dhanya said when asked later how she did it.

And the hardest word?

“I don’t think there were any hard words. ‘Gaufrette’ was a little hard, just a little. I was unsure of it, but I just had a feeling it was spelled like that” because the word was French in origin, she said.

Dhanya, 13, an eighth-grader at Shelton Intermediate School, is the third child in her family to win the annual spelling bee for fifth- to eighth-graders who won spelling bees in their towns.

Her brother Venkatesa Tadipatri won in 1996 and her sister Ramya Tadipatri won in 2000, 2001 and 2002. They are the children of Meera and Kesava Tadipatri of Shelton.

Her parents said they were excited by the win.

“It’s fantastic. All three of our kids made it. It’s great. Her elder sister finished sixth in the nation. Her sister was her inspiration,” Meera Tadipatri said.

Before the bee began, the 22 participants from the region appeared tense while seated on the stage in Lyman Auditorium of Southern Connecticut State University. But they took command of the situation, one by one, as they approached the microphone.

Third-place winner John H. King, 13, an eighth-grader at North Haven Middle School, missed the proper spelling of “taphonomy,” the study of the processes that affect animal and plant remains as they become fossils.

Then it was down to Katy Donahue, 13, an eighth-grader at Madison Middle School in Trumbull, and Dhanya.

Katy asked spelling bee pronouncer Robert Barton, a retired Register editor and columnist, to give a sentence and the origin of “gaufrette,” but “gophret” was not the spelling for a wafer of crisply friend potato cut to resemble a small waffle.

Dhanya then walked up to the microphone, spelled “gaufrette” with ease, then spelled “perlingual” to take home the first prize.

For her win, Dhanya will travel to Washington, D.C., in May to participate in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, courtesy of the Register. Dhanya also received a Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and its addenda section; the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award, which is a $100 U.S. savings bond donated by Jay Sugarman; a $500 savings bond donated by the New Haven Register; and a first-place trophy.

For finishing second Katy received the Tenth Edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, a $250 savings bond from the Register, a $20 gift certificate to amazon.com donated by the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, and a second-place trophy.

The third-place winner received a $100 savings bond from the Register; a $20 amazon.com gift certificate from the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and a third-place trophy.

The Register gave $50 savings bonds and trophies to the other 20 participants.