This week a new Scripps National Spelling Bee champion was crowned. The 2013 champion is Arvind Mahankali from Bayside Hills, New York. His final winning words were “tokonoma” and “knaidel.” The spell check on Blogger doesn’t even recognize those words. The English language is full of spelling quirks. The TED-Ed video Making Sense of Spelling explains why some words are spelled the way they are and why some words have multiple spellings. The video is embedded below.