Missouri teen Gokul Venkatachalam and Kansas’s Vanya Shivashankar tied for the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee title Thursday, in the second consecutive year officials have crowned co-champions. The 13-year-old Shivashankar, whose sister won the Bee in 2009, secured the title on the word scherenschnitte. Venkatachalam, 14, was told he would be co-champion if he spelled his final word correctly and without asking a definition, won on the word nunatak. Scripps had not crowned co-champions since 1962 until last year, when officials also ran out of words on the list to separate the two finalists.
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