Google 'Year in search 2021': Search for speller Zaila Avant-garde surged 5 times

The search for the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition winner reached a 5 times high this year. According to Google Trends, the search rose quintuple in July after the 14-year-old won Scripps National Spelling Bee.

"After Zaila Avant-garde won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee, the winning word murraya (a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees) became a breakout search along with gewgaw (a showy item)," Google said.

While the exact reason behind the surge wasn’t revealed by the search engine, this years winner Zaila Avant-Garde garnered noticeable traction after she became the first African American to win the popular contest in almost a century. "After Zaila Avant-garde won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee, the winning word murraya (a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees) became a breakout search along with gewgaw (a showy item)," Google said.

"Can you use it in a sentence? This July, worldwide search interest for spelling bee winner reached a five-year high," a Google statement read. 

Who is Zaila Avant-garde?

Zaila Avant-garde was born on February 9, 2007, in the state of Louisiana. Coached by former Scripps finalist Cole Shafer-Ray, she reached the nationals in the 2019 Bee. Two years later, she scripted history by correctly spelling murraya. With her feat, Ziala became the first African American to secure the title.

"Most spellers look at words simply as a sequence of letters to memorize; Zaila looked at each word as a story...Not only did she know each word's spelling, but she also knew its entire backstory - what its historical context was, what roots it came from, and the precise orthographical logic of why every letter of every word had to be exactly what it was", Cole Shafer-Ray told reporters.

Interestingly, Zaila possesses other talents as well- juggling and basketball. She was the silver medalist at the International Jugglers' Association 2020 championship in the Juniors Division (18U). The teen also holds three basketball Guinness World Records and is co-holder of a separate world record.

What was most searched in 2020?

1. NBA
2. DMX
3. Gabby Petito
4. Kyle Rittenhouse
5. Brian Laundrie
6. Mega Millions
7. AMC Stock
8. Stimulus Check
9. Georgia Senate Race
10. Squid Game

(Image: Google)