Akshay Buddiga, left, who was declared second place winner at the 77th Annual Scripps Spelling Bee, with David Tidmarsh, who won the contest in the 15th round, in Washington, D.C. on June 3. (Photo: Courtsey, www.spellingbee.com)

Akshay Buddiga of Colarado was declared second place winner at the 77th Annual Scripps Spelling Bee held in Washington, D.C. on June 3. David Tidmarsh, 14, from Indiana won the contest in the 15th round by spelling ‘autochthonous’ correctly and was awarded the trophy and $12,000 in cash.

In the 14th round, Buddiga spelt ‘schwarmerei’ as ‘svermari’ and lost out. He was awarded $6,000. Sponsored by the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, 13-year-old Buddiga is an eighth grade student at Mountain Ridge Middle School in Colorado Springs. An avid reader, he enjoys playing harp, chess, basketball, and video games. He also likes to hike Colorado mountain trails. Buddiga won the Colorado state championship in the 2004 Reader’s Digest National Word Power Challenge. His favorite subjects in school are English and science. His brother, Pratyush, is the 2002 national champion, the Spelling Bee Web site said.

Others who made it to the finals were Keshav Krishna Pillai, placed joint eighth. Sponsored by The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, 14-year-old Pillai is an eighth grade student at Incarnate Word Academy in Parma Heights, Ohio. Biplab Panda, sponsored by Atlanta Daily World from Atlanta, GA; Snigdha Sur, sponsored by Daily News, New York; and Rajiv Tarigopula, sponsored by St. Louis Post-Dispatch, were among those placed joint 16th.

Saptarishi Chaudhuri, sponsored by The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio; Samir Patel, sponsored by Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Shankari Rajagopal, sponsored by Las Vegas-Review Journal, Las Vegas, Nevada; Raghav Srinivasan, sponsored by The Times of Trenton, Trenton, New Jersey; and Anneika Verghese, sponsored by The Daily Journal, Kankakee, Illinois, were among those placed joint 27th.

Nidharshan Anandasivam, sponsored by Valley Freedom Papers in Harlingen, TX; Abhiram Gunturi, sponsored by the Dallas Morning News, Dallas; Anurag Kashyap, sponsored by The San Diego Union-Tribune; Steven Maheshwary, sponsored by Houston Chronicle, Houston, TX; Amar Mehta, sponsored by Capital Gazette Newspapers from Annapolis, Maryland; and Pooja Shah, sponsored by San Francisco Chronicle, CA, were among those placed joint 47th.

Stephanie Desouza, sponsored by Orlando Sentinel; Ashwini Gokhale, sponsored by The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Indiana; Arjun Modi, sponsored by The Record and Herald News from Hackensack, New Jersey; and Sachin Raghunathan, sponsored by The Dispatch and The Rock Island Margus from Moline, IL, were among those placed joint 71st.

Anoopdeep Bal, sponsored by The Vindicator from Youngstown, Ohio; Priyanka Bose, sponsored by The State Journal-Register, Springfield, IL; Shekar Dukkipati, sponsored by The Dallas Morning News, TX; Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan, sponsored by Daily Camera from Boulder, Colarado; Shruti Mishra, sponsored by Journal and Carrier, Lafayette, Indiana; Shashank Nayak, sponsored by Odessa American from Odessa, TX; Aneesh Rajmaira, sponsored by Chronicle-Tribune from Marion, Indiana; Nilesh Rawal, sponsored by The Saginaw News from Saginaw, Michmigan; Cassiopeia Roychowdhury, sponsored by The Evening News, Sayre, Pennsylvania; Sahiti Surapaneni, sponsored by The Sun from Lowell, MA; and Umer Vohra, sponsored by The Arab News, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; were among those placed joint 95th.