Sukanya Roy, an 8th grader from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last night, defeating Laura Newcombe, from Toronto, Canada (USA! USA! USA!), when Newcombe misspelled "sorites" ("an argument consisting of propositions so arranged that the predicate of any one forms the subject of the next and the conclusion unites the subject of the first proposition with the predicate of the last") as "psorites". On her way to the title, Roy spelled a number of words that I was previously unfamiliar with (well, I knew "croissant" and "orgeat", but that's about it) and won't likely ever hear or read again. Just for the record, and to provide some educational content on The Range today, here are the words Roy breezed through to a win:

croissant
execration
hesthogenous
amphistylar
watteau
thalassocracy
psephomancy
pyopoiesis
völkerwanderung
rapakivi
lakatoi
zwischenspiel
preux preux
sangsue
lekane
naumkeag
orgeat
periscii
cymotrichous