A 14-year-old first-time competitor is America's top speller for 2018.

Karthik Nemmani, of McKinney, Texas, correctly spelled koinonia and won the 91st Scripps National Spelling Bee, which featured the largest ever field of 515.

For his efforts, Nemmani won more than $40,000, the Scripps trophy, $2,500 and a complete reference library from Merriam-Webster, $400 of reference works and a three-year membership to Encyclopedia Britannica, a Pizza Hut party at his school, and expenses-paid trips to Los Angeles and New York to appear on two nationally known television shows.

Coming in second was 12-year-old Naysa Modi, of Frisco, Texas, who was appearing in her fourth National Spelling Bee. It was down to Nemmani and Modi in round 17 when Modi misspelled Bewusstseinslage. Karthik completed the round by correctly spelling haecceitas, then won it all.

Months of qualifying had taken place, resulting in the record number of participants. States and regions around the country and in other countries had qualifying events.

In a twist involving a new rule, both of the top two contestants had participated in the same county bee. Naysa won that round, qualifying for the national event. Nemmani qualified under a new invitational program called RSVBee, which allowed to qualify contestants who had won their school bee or had competed nationally before. Three other of the 16 prime-time finalists qualified through RSVBee, which qualified 238 contestants overall.

As a result, the national bee aded an extra day of on-stage spelling. The first day of winnowing the field featured a written test, then it was on to the spelling. For the finals, televised live, 16 contestants had a shot at the title.

Some stats:

• Male competitors slightly outnumbered females, 278#&8211;240.
• The oldest competitor was 15; the youngest ws 8.
• 114 competitors had competed in the national bee before.