GREEN RIVER, Emery County — Here's just one of Kunal Sah's problems: 5,000 more words to study and only nine days left until the National Spelling Bee.

A couple of months ago, Kunal had ordered a $150 two-volume set of difficult words — the famous "Nat's Notes" used, as he says, by "professional spellers" — but the company lost his order. So, the list of words only arrived a few days ago. Kunal relates this fact with resignation and a curt, sullen bravado. Everything is going wrong, his demeanor says, but I'm determined to win.

For a champion speller, Kunal is, ironically, a boy of few words, so reticent on a recent evening that he seemed to speak without opening his mouth. Perhaps he's just tired of being interviewed, tired of explaining to the New York Times and NBC that he needs to win the Bee in Washington, D.C., next week so the U.S. government will let his parents back into the country.

At 13, Kunal has faith that immigration officials will be moved by his unrelenting efforts to memorize pretty much the entire dictionary; that they'll recognize that the parents of a boy this smart and dedicated deserve to live in America.

His parents were forced to return to India last summer, after a 14-year failed application for asylum. Since then, Kunal has lived with his uncle at his family's motel here.

Kunal, born in the United States and therefore a U.S. citizen, moved to Green River with his parents at age 3, when they bought the town's Budget Inn. Later, his parents built a Ramada Inn at the east end of town, just down the hill from where Main Street heads off into sage brush.

On a beautiful spring evening in mid-May, Kunal sits on the sofa studying. He copies down pages of spelling words, writing each word six times if it's especially hard. This page begins with chez, moves through chionablepsia (a fancy word for snow-blindness) and then on to chitarrino.

When you know big words and you use them in your real life, Kunal says, sometimes your friends wonder why you couldn't just use a simpler word. Asked for an example, Kunal offers this word: melancholy.

Spelling competitions have experienced an odd renaissance in recent years. Despite the fact that spell-check software has nearly eliminated the desire to learn to spell, Americans have flocked to two spelling bee movies and a Broadway musical. We're a people who love our white-knuckle competitions, whether they involve grown men racing cars in a circle or children laboriously taking a stab at the word filiopietistic.