Sameer Mishra, who went on to win the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, thought the judges were calling him names during one of the late rounds in the contest.
Mishra approached the microphone, the judge called out the word, the audience laughed, and, as is protocol, the 13-year-old repeated what he heard with a slight panic in his voice: "numbnut."
Turns out, the judge had said, "numnah," a Hindi word for a kind of blanket. He spelled it correctly. In an interview before the final round, he said of the misheard word, "there are just so many ways to spell it!"
That kid ain't no numbnut (or knumnutt, or nummnut, or ...)
Vidoe: YouTube/ESPN
