Voting Station

Karthik Nemmani

Please vote to return to collections.

Speling Be Chimp

The Resume

    (circa 2004- )
    Resident of McKinney, Texas (a suburb of Dallas
    Winner of the 91st Scripps National Spelling Bee (May 31, 2018)
    Winning word: koinonia (Christian fellowship or communion)
    Won over $40,000 in cash and prizes
    14th consecutive Indian-American winner

Why he might be annoying:

    His own name is pretty tough to spell.
    His family moved to McKinney specifically so he could attend a school that participates in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
    He lost the county spelling bee, which would normally have made him ineligible for the national bee, but he was able to attend through a new wild card program.
    To win the national bee, he beat Naysa Modi, who had defeated him at the county spelling bee. (As an aside, the third place finisher at the national bee, Abhijay Kodali, had placed behind Modi in the regional spelling bee. So the Dallas metro area produced the nation’s top three spellers.)

Why he might not be annoying:

    As a wild card competitor, his family had to pay a $750 entry fee and cover his travel, food and lodging costs.
    Thanks to wild card entries, he had to beat out the largest field of competitors in Scripps National Spelling Bee history – 515 (compared to the previous record of 293 in 2009).
    He said about facing Modi again, ‘I wouldn’t say it was revenge. We weren’t against each other. We were against the dictionary.’
    He also said about Modi, ‘She deserved the trophy as much as I did. I got lucky.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 20.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 90.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 83 Votes: 51.81% Annoying