WASHINGTON (AP) – Pranay Varada was stung by last year’s National Geographic Bee, when he flubbed the official language of Sierra Leone – it’s English; he answered French – and finished in sixth place. Determined to avoid another setback in his final year of eligibility, he started studying for this year’s bee that same day.
He spent a year foregoing school field trips and birthday parties to pore over spreadsheets he created with dossiers on every country in the world. That hard work paid off Wednesday as Pranay finished off the bee the way he’d envisioned: standing on stage with a medal around his neck, accepting congratulations and prizes including a $50,000 scholarship.
“It was extreme disappointment, to get all the way up here and not win,” said Pranay, a 14-year-old 8th-grader with a wispy black mustache. “I was researching and trying to find ways to not make the same mistakes twice.”
Pranay, who lives in Irving, Texas, survived a tense duel with another top-10 finisher from last year, 14-year-old Thomas Wright of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Pranay had the best score through most of the 2-hour competition, but Thomas pulled even when he gave a more thorough answer to an essay-type question about a country that would be well-suited for resettling residents of the Maldives displaced by rising sea levels.
During the championship rounds, both boys got all five questions correct, but only after Pranay successfully challenged an answer that was initially deemed wrong. The question was about a mountain range between northern Vietnam and Laos; Pranav identified it as the Annamite Range and not the Annam Mountains.