They couldn’t be rattled. Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar had worked too hard and come close too many times not to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday. So they shared the title, making history in two different ways. The bee hadn’t ended in a tie for 52 years — until last year. Vanya, 13, of Olathe, Kansas, is the first sibling of a past champion to win. Vanya’s final word was “scherenschnitte,” which means the art of cutting paper into decorative designs. Asked what he thought when he got the word, Gokul said, “Vanya and I were going to be the champions.”
