WASHINGTON A 13-year-old computer whiz who taught himself to read at the age of 2 won the U.S. National Spelling Bee on Thursday, ending a seven-round shootout with the word "succedaneum."

Sean Conley of Aitkin, Minnesota, said he studied harder last year, when he came in second, but that was when he was being homeschooled and had more time, Reuters reported.

"I wasn't sure that I would win this year because I didn't really study as hard as i did last year since I was going to school instead of homeschooling," Conley said, looking slightly glazed after three days of anxiety-ridden competition against 247 other spellers.

"But I guess I've been doing this for six years now, and I guess all that practice has really paid off this time."

Conley won in the 16th round of the contest in a hotel ballroom three floors below street level, spending the last rounds head-to-head with a single rival, Kristin Hawkins, a 13-year-old from Leesburg, Virginia. Hawkins lost on the word "resipiscence" in round 15.

Conley correctly spelled "gallimaufry" to end that round and, as required under contest rules, spelled "succedaneum" (a rare synonym for "substitute") in the 16th round to win the $10,000 grand prize, a loving cup that he held with trembling hands, an encyclopedia and a set of great books of the Western world, along with other prizes.

Most of the last day of competition was carried live on ESPN television, a cable sports channel, but the Spelling Bee lost out to golf in its last hour or so. The network came back for a live interview with Conley after his victory.

He told reporters that his German heritage helped him with "schadenfreude" and his studies in Spanish made "zarzuela" fairly easy. The toughest challenge was "inesculent."

Currently enrolled at the Minnesota Renaissance School in Anoka, Conley said his home schooling helped him prepare over the long run, even though he only studied 30 minutes to an hour each night to prepare for the bee this year.

"I was really lucky to have homeschooled all this time because I had enough time to practice for the Spelling Bee instead of having to do a lot of other work that wasn't necessarily stuff that I wanted to learn about or that was exactly at my level," he said.

Twenty-five contestants are currently homeschooled, 25 go to parochial school, 28 attend private school and most go to public schools. There were more girls -- 138 -- than boys in this year's competition, which was sponsored by Scripps Howard.

The son of a software engineer and a home school educator, Conley taught himself to read when he was 2, according to the official biography in the contest program.

He has written two computer video games and said he wants to be a computer programer. He has completed three semesters of college-level Spanish and computer programing.

This was the 74th edition of the national spelling competition.