Scrabble is enjoyable, but it’s not always the simplest game, especially when you’re playing in a language that isn’t your native tongue. Imagine the challenge of playing your first competitive Scrabble game in a language you don’t even speak. That’s precisely what happened to a man from New Zealand, who managed to win the Spanish-language Scrabble world championship.
Nigel Richards, a professional player with five English-language world titles, overcame the language barrier to claim the Spanish Scrabble championship in Granada, Spain, losing just one game out of 24. The defending champion, Benjamín Olaizola of Argentina, who speaks Spanish fluently, finished second after winning 18 of his games.
Richards doesn’t speak Spanish and only began memorizing the language’s Scrabble word list a year ago, according to his friend Liz Fagerlund, a New Zealand Scrabble official. “He can’t understand why others can’t do the same,” she said. “He can look at a group of words and once they’re in his brain as a picture, he can recall them easily.”
This isn’t the first time Richards has achieved such a feat. In 2015, he became the French Scrabble world champion despite not speaking French, after studying the word list for nine weeks. He repeated the victory in 2018. Recognized as the greatest Scrabble player of all time, Richards’ Spanish victory was particularly remarkable, given the differences in tile values and the thousands of additional seven, eight, and nine-letter words in Spanish.
In 2008, Richards became the first player to hold the world, US, and British Scrabble titles simultaneously. His mother, Adrienne Fischer, revealed that Richards didn’t excel in English at school, never attended university, and approached the game mathematically rather than linguistically. “I don’t think he’s ever read a book, apart from the dictionary,” she said.
Richards, who now lives in Malaysia, remains an enigma as he never speaks to reporters. “I get many requests from journalists wanting to interview him, but he’s not interested,” Fagerlund said. “He doesn’t understand the fuss.” Whatever his thoughts, his achievements are undeniably impressive.
In Spanish, that’s ‘alboroto,’ worth 10 points on the Scrabble board. You’re welcome.
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