CIMA Spellmaster – Top 4 for Grand Finale revealed
View(s):The Top 4 spellers of this year’s “Spellmaster” has now been identified. Two weeks down the line the competition has witnessed eight competitors being brought down to four. For the 1st time ever, two sisters have made it through to the finals and in a total contrast to the previous competitions we find 3 of the 4 competitor’s girls and, all from coming from the same school.
The last 2 weeks witnessed two new formats to test the knowledge and not just the spelling skills of the students, pushing them to greater heights. Brought in at the top 8 was “spotting the right spelling”, where contestants were flashed words and they had to say which option had the right spelling, for instance, “heirarchy” or “hierarchy”, “idiosyncrasy” or “idiosyncracy” and “assasination” or “assassination”. To ensure the competitors not only learnt the spellings to words but also their meanings, officials introduced a round at the top 6, wherein the contestants were given the meaning of a word and they in turn had to say what the word was and spell it out.
The rapid fire round proved to be intimidating for all the students as none of them knew if they would get through or not. This was the case for Lihan Mendis of S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia and Gunaseelan Lidushan of Highlands College Hatton, who had to bow out of the Top 8 competition as they both got the lowest scores in that round, whilst Ramith and Ruchini came in at a tie with the highest, spelling 12 words of 15. Following closely behind were all 3 Visakhians who spelled a total of 10 words, despite Bhagya Jayasooriya saying they don’t enjoy the rapid fire as it was “tongue twisting”.
The final competition before the grand finale featured 3 Visakhians, the 2 Bhagya’s and Charya, two Thomians, Ramith from Preparatory and Wishmitha from Mount Lavinia and Ruchini from Girls’ High School Kandy. This time the rapid fire proved to be in favour of Bhagya Jayasooriya as she scored the highest in that round, spelling 11 words. Being the highest scorer she automatically qualified to the Top 4, saying that she was “euphoric” about it. Along with her Ramith and Charya sailed through to the grand finals.
Wishmitha Peiris of S.Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia had the lowest score and had to leave the competition, however, he wasn’t disheartened as he said he was still young and could return next year to take part in the competition.
The competition can take unexpected twists when you least expect it to. Bhagya Samarakoon, one of the sisters’, found herself in the bottom two with Ruchini and both had to battle it out for a place to the Top 4. Ruchini who had spelled all five words given to her prior to the rapid fire, spelled only 6 words in the round, whilst Bhagya who had spelled four words at the first round spelled 7 words at the rapid fire, leading both of them to a tie.
The spotlight was on Bhagya and Ruchini, with one more seat left to the grand finals, both vying to get through, there was much tension amongst the audience as well. Bhagya receiving her word from Hindi origin “chukka” and Ruchini given a word from South African origin “jol”, both words seemingly easy to spell, however, much thought was put into it by the two contestants and both misspelled the words marginally, Bhagya spelling it “chakka” and Ruchini spelling the word “joll”. “Bombora” was Bhagya’s next word and she spelled it spot on, the pressure was now on Ruchini, who received the word “Gazunder”, and to her dismay she spelled it “gazunda”.
This year’s top 4 is clearly an inverse of last year’s. Ramith surrounded by the three Visakhians, of which the outcome is surely to be a surprise, as all four of them are equally competent.
With one more week to the Grand Finals, continue to watch Sirasa TV at 6 pm as the competition reveals who the Spellmaster 2013 is.
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