Several students in Newtown Public Schools' Project Challenge program recently received a perfect score in the last of three meets in the 2025-26 WordMasters Challenge.

The event is a national vocabulary competition involving nearly 125,000 students annually.

Competing in the difficult Gold Division of the WordMasters Challenge, fourth grader Bella Mehra; fifth graders Ian Chang, Justin Kubik, and Ike McGrath; and sixth grader Madeline Lucian each earned a perfect score of 20 on the recent challenge. Nationally, only 61 fourth graders, 92 fifth graders, and 57 sixth graders achieved this result.

Other students from Newtown Public Schools who achieved outstanding results in the meet include fourth grader Jonathan Liu, fifth grader Aiden Whiteley, and sixth graders Chase Ibbitson and Lucy Tyrrell.

The students were coached in preparation for the competition by Project Challenge teachers Kate Magness and Eric Myhill.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships.

Working to solve the analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.

Although most vocabulary enrichment and analogy-solving programs are designed for use by high school students, WordMasters Challenge materials have been specifically created for younger students in grades three through eight.

They are particularly well-suited for children who are motivated by the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.

The WordMasters Challenge program is administered by a company based in New Jersey, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools. Further information is available at wordmasterschallenge.com.