After three consecutive ties, the National Spelling Bee was determined to have a solo winner, so it added a new tiebreaker procedure for Thursday night's finals in Oxon Hill, Md.
They nearly needed it, as finalists Ananya Vinay and Rohan Rajeev burned through round after round of words.
But Rohan tripped on the word "marram" (the Norse-derived word for a type of grass found on beaches), and Ananya was able to capitalize, correctly spelling "marocain" (a heavy crepe fabric, its name derived from the French word for Moroccan) to win.