Your word is 'dissonant'

ROSS GIBLIN

BOOK SMART: Tom Winter, 13, flicks through a dictionary he won as New Zealand's new spelling champ.

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Christchurch teenager Tom Winter has a whopping great dictionary in his hands and a spelling bee in his bonnet.

With precision spelling of the word "dissonant", the 13-year-old Burnside High School student won the New Zealand Vegemite Spelling Bee held in Wellington on Saturday.

Winter has 10 weeks to prepare for the world's most prestigious spelling bee – the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC.

Winter said the national championship was "more tense with fierce competition" compared with the regional finals.

"I did hope to win but I think a lot of it is luck.

"It just depends. If you get a word you don't know, that's it. Some of my harder words were chrysanthemum and eulogistic."

Part of his prize was a five kilogram Webster Dictionary loaded with 475,000 words.

He and his mother, English teacher Penny Olds, will travel to the American spelling bee in June.

It will be the first time Winter has travelled outside New Zealand or Australia.

He is excited to explore the American capital and meet fellow spellers.

"The American one is tougher because they throw in really obscure words and there are people who are really serious about it," he said.

The New Zealand event co-founder, Janet Lucas, said Winter's win was a coup for Cantabrians as he was the second Christchurch speller to win the competition in the event's six-year history. Linwood College's Kate Weir was the 2007 winner. She went on to reach the semi-finals of the American competition.

"Tom has only a few weeks to prepare for the big American final," Lucas said.

"It's a fantastic opportunity for him to meet like-minded children who share a love of words and language."

- © Fairfax NZ News