Kapil, an 11-year-old 6th-grader from Hoover, Alabama, who has encyclopedic recall of far-flung places, couldn't name the largest port city in Georgia (Savannah) and was bounced.
Kapil is back in the bee this year, and he's a lot more knowledgeable about places close to home. He's even visited Savannah.
"We went to Savannah during Christmas. We went up the East Coast and all the way up to Montreal," Kapil said. "I've learned a lot about the United States in the past year."
The finals, which will be taped for broadcast on National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo WILD, have a game show-type format, with pre-taped segments, quirky scoring and questions that are sometimes subjective.
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The winner can be hard to predict, and unlike the National Spelling Bee which will also be contested this week repeat finalists have been rare.
Also like the spelling bee, the winners in recent years have been predominantly Indian-American, and the competition has become a point of pride for that community.
Humorist, author and "CBS Sunday Morning" correspondent Mo Rocca takes over as host of the finals this year. Alex Trebek was the host for 25 years before stepping down after the 2013 bee.
Kapil joins two others who were among last year's 10 finalists and will take another crack at the title: 13-year-old Patrick Taylor of Iowa City, Iowa, and 13-year-old Nicholas Monahan of McCall, Idaho. And there are 14 other repeat state-level winners in the competition, including Mika Ishii, who won the Hawaii bee for the fourth time.