Champion

Topeka, Kansas

Peg McCarthy, age 13, sponsored by The Topeka Daily Capital, won the $1,000 prize by correctly spelling the word “deification.”

Peg became a National Merit Scholar and a U.S. Presidential Scholar en route to earning a B.A. in English from Yale University. Then she worked as a copy editor at the former Albuquerque Tribune. She later earned her M.A. and Ph.D in Clinical Psychology from the University of Kansas.