His family chose not to disclose the circumstances of his death. Other notable spellers George Thampy was speller # 245 in the bee and was mentioned several times within the film. He misspelled "kirtle" as "curtle" for third place, tying with April DeGideo. Thampy eventually won the 2000 national bee. David Lewandowski finished second place in the spelling bee, spelling "opsimath" as "opsomath". After David's mistake, Nupur spelled "logorrhea" to win the competition. Allyson Lieberman was originally slated to be featured as one of the spellers in the documentary, but her clips were ultimately left out of the film; the scene involving her can be found in the special features of the DVD. The youngest contestant in the entire 1998 bee, she misspelled "purblind". Frances Taschuk and Ann Foley are shown in the final set of scenes prior to the last round of the spelling bee. Frances misspells "acoelous" and Ann "quinquevir". Vinay Krupadev is in a scene involving Harry's mother feeling "sorry for the boy from Texas who got 'yenta'". She was referring to Vinay, who is actually from Marietta, Ohio, and his pronunciation of "yenta," shown in the film. He eventually spelled it "yente". Jess Altman was mentioned in a scene by Harry Altman for being a terrific speller and that he was disappointed she didn't make the Nationals. Sonia Nagala won the North Dakota bee with the word "butyraceous", but was eliminated in the second round of the Nationals. She completed her MBA at Harvard Business School in 2018. Frank Neuhauser, winner of the first National Spelling Bee, held in 1925, also appears in the film. Reception Spellbound opened to positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 97%, based on reviews from 139 critics, and an average rating of 8.27/10. The website's critical consensus states, "A suspenseful, gripping documentary that features an engaging cross section of American children". Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 80% based on reviews from 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Awards The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; Yana Gorskaya's editing won the ACE Eddie award for best editing of documentary. Spellbound won the Emmy Award for Cultural/Artistic Programming and Jeffrey Blitz was nominated for directing. In 2007, it was included as #4 of the "IDA's Top 25 Documentaries" of all-time by the members of the International Documentary