One would think that in order to win Scrabble of any kind, you would need to speak the language fluently.
New Zealander Nigel Richards proved us all wrong as he won the word game’s French-language world championship on Monday without understanding the language, according to The Huffington Post.
Although Richards, who has won several English-language Scrabble competitions, doesn’t know how to speak the language, he made sure to study a French dictionary before he entered the championship, according to NPR.
“He doesn’t speak French at all, he just learnt the words,” the man’s friend, Liz Fagerlund, told the New Zealand Herald.
“He won’t know what they mean, wouldn’t be able to carry out a conversation in French I wouldn’t think.”
Richards reportedly began studying to win the French world title in late May, mastering the words he needed to take over the competition, according to the French Scrabble Federation.
“Basically, what he does is, he looks at word lists and looks at dictionary pages… he can conjure up the image of what he has seen. He told me that if he actually hears a word, it doesn’t stick in his brain. But if he sees it once, that’s enough for him to recall the image of it. I don’t know if that’s a photographic memory; I just think it’s something that his brain chemistry allows him to do,” explained Scrabble expert Stefan Fatsis.
Richards actually seems to think about words, not as a whole, but in letters, as a Scrabble champion would.
“To him words are just combinations of letters. I’m perhaps exaggerating a bit, but he comes up with scrabbled (words of seven or more letters) that others take 10 years to know,” Yves Brenez, the competition’s organizer, told FranceTV.
Richards reportedly won the French title with a final score of 565-434 over Gabon’s Schélick Ilagou Rekawe.
“Nigel Richards is the best Scrabble player all-time, hands down,” stated Fatsis.
