Trump Typo ‘Covfefe’ Stumps Spelling Bee Champ

(CNN) — Twelve-year-old Ananya Vinay became the nation’s latest national spelling champion Thursday when she correctly spelled 35 words in a row, some of which were so obscure as to stump the most educated adult.

Then she encountered “covfefe.”

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day” Friday, Ananya was asked by anchors Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo to spell the typo made by President Donald Trump in an apparent Twitter misfire this week that quickly went viral.

“Language of origin?” she inquired.

“Gibberish,” Cameota and Cuomo replied.

“Part of speech?” asked Ananya, further trying to map the word in her vast mental vocabulary.

She finally ventured a guess, which was just barely wrong, at least according to the President’s spelling of the non-word.

“C-O-F-E-F-E?” she guessed, while giggling could be heard in the background.

“Good enough!” Cuomo said.

“You win!” Camerota said. “Again, it was a nonsense word.”

At 12:06 a.m. ET Wednesday, Trump tweeted: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”

Within six hours, it had had garnered 127,000 retweets and 62,000 likes — taking its place as one of his most popular tweets ever.

By 6 a.m. ET, that tweet had been deleted. Shortly after, Trump tweeted this: “Who can figure out the true meaning of “covfefe” ??? Enjoy!”

Ananya, of Fresno, California, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday after numerous rounds against Rohan Rajeev. The pair were the last two standing of the initial 291 spellers.

“I just focused on my word and tried to spell it right,” Ananya said on “New Day.”

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. (Photo: CNN)

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