Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School’s Nicholas Dol­ly has been crowned the 2023 Spell­bound cham­pi­on.

Liam Chauhar­jas­ingh, of El So­cor­ro Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, was the run­ner-up, while San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School’s Kai­ley Pan­choo se­cured third place.

CNC3’s Spell­bound, a spelling game for school­child­ren aged ten and un­der, con­clud­ed sea­son two yes­ter­day.

“It is my hope that my per­for­mance will in­spire all to be­lieve in your­self and any­thing you imag­ine can be achieved,” Nicholas said af­ter be­ing crowned cham­pi­on.

“I would like to thank Mrs Rat­tan, prin­ci­pal of Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, for en­trust­ing me with the ho­n­our of rep­re­sent­ing the school at the com­pe­ti­tion. The ben­e­fits that I have gained by com­pet­ing in Spell­bound will last a life­time—learn­ing to spell a va­ri­ety of ad­vanced words and re­in­force­ment of the prin­ci­ple of self-dis­ci­pline and hard work will bring suc­cess.”

“I en­joyed be­ing a par­tic­i­pant of Spell­bound and al­though I am in­tro­vert­ed by na­ture, the Spell­bound team melt­ed all that ner­vous­ness away. This mem­o­ry of my achieve­ment will be for­ev­er etched in my mem­o­ry,” he added.

His elat­ed fa­ther, Mark Dol­ly, en­cour­aged oth­er par­ents to par­tic­i­pate and sup­port the show.

“As a par­ent of a com­peti­tor on Spell­bound, my over­all ex­pe­ri­ence was awe­some, the staff at CNC3 made every­one feel as part of the CNC3 fam­i­ly.

“I would like to thank CNC3 for pro­vid­ing the plat­form where the tal­ents of all en­trants were show­cased on a na­tion­al stage,” the fa­ther said.

The show’s di­rec­tor, Robert Du­mas, said sev­en pupils com­pet­ed in each episode, spelling chal­leng­ing words in a lim­it­ed time.

“Each round in­volved an ac­tiv­i­ty that would pair stu­dents with a group of words un­til the fi­nal two stu­dents faced off in “The Sting”, which be­gan with a ‘fastest fin­ger’ chal­lenge and on­ly end­ed when a pupil could both cor­rect­ly spell the word and pro­vide a sen­tence us­ing it that showed an un­der­stand­ing of the word’s mean­ing. The fi­nale fea­tured the sev­en win­ners from every episode of sea­son two,” he ex­plained.

The hour-long spe­cial show­cased not on­ly the par­tic­i­pants’ spelling skills, but al­so in­clud­ed an ed­u­ca­tion­al seg­ment led by In­spec­tor of Api­aries Hay­den Sinanan.

A re­al api­ary of live bees al­so took cen­tre stage, pro­vid­ing an en­gag­ing and in­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ence for the young au­di­ence.

The episode al­so fea­tured a field trip to the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and the Wild Fowl Trust, of­fer­ing a broad­er per­spec­tive on learn­ing be­yond the con­fines of a class­room.

Each episode this sea­son fea­tured a seg­ment with pupils from sea­son one ask­ing adults to try and spell some of the fea­tured words, prov­ing just how dif­fi­cult it can be to spell.

For the show, the word-pro­nounc­er was Con­rad Par­ris, with Can­dice Cor­riea Charles over­see­ing as a judge. Every episode came to a close with a mag­ic show for the kids by Kess The Il­lu­sion­ist, the man who “brings the Spells to Spell­bound”, ac­cord­ing to Du­mas.

Spell­bound was host­ed by Hema Ramkissoon, af­fec­tion­ate­ly known as the Queen Bee, with as­sis­tance from Stephon Felmine.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion ap­proved Spell­bound for sea­son one and this sea­son, the min­istry be­came a spon­sor.

Oth­er spon­sors in­clud­ed KFC, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, D Best Toys, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, Kiss Desserts, Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors, Lin­da’s, Tar­get, French’s, De­von, Lo­tus, and KC Con­fec­tionery.

All fi­nal­ists re­ceived a KFC gift card, a tablet cour­tesy Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors, a $200 Re­pub­lic Bank Right Start Ac­count, an eight-inch spe­cial­ty cake from Kiss Desserts, and a ham­per cour­tesy Lo­tus. Every stu­dent who com­pet­ed on the show re­ceived one year of free bread cour­tesy of Lin­da’s.