S-T-R-O-M-U-H-R Spells Winner

It’s a good thing Anamika Veeramani wants to be a cardiovascular surgeon. Her passion helped her become the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion of 2010.

The 14-year-old beat 273 other wordsmiths earlier this month by correctly spelling the name of a medical device that measures the amount and speed of blood flow through an artery. Though Veeramani admitted she studied the winning word— “stromuhr”—before the spelling bee, the mayor in her hometown of North Royalton, Ohio, credits the girl’s success to her interest in cardiac surgery.

“She wants to go into the medical field, so I knew she’d correctly spell that last word,” North Royalton Mayor Robert Stefanik told Cleveland.com.

Veeramani wasn’t sure she’d get to spell the winning word. She said there were several times during the competition in Washington, D.C., that she made “informed guesses” on words she didn’t know (one was epiphysis and the other was mirin, a type of Japanese wine made from rice).

Veeramani said her mother helped her master the spellings of most words while her younger brother—a geography whiz—tutored her on geographic words.

The stromuhr, which in German translates to “stream clock,” was designed by Carl Ludwig in 1867.