OXON HILL, Md.—Bruhat Soma insisted he was nervous during the idle hours as he waited to take the Scripps National Spelling Bee stage, and he felt even more pressure to perform given that he hadn’t lost a spelling bee in eight months.
He never showed any nerves in front of the microphone, though, and when the bee abruptly went to a lightning-round tiebreaker known as a “spell-off,” he could not have been more comfortable.
