Press "Enter" to skip to content

Spanish Scrabble Champion Doesn’t Speak Spanish

Granada, Spain —(Map)

On November 16, Nigel Richards once again won a world Scrabble championship. That may not seem surprising, since Mr. Richards has already won many Scrabble championships. But this Scrabble contest was in Spanish – a language Mr. Richards doesn’t even speak. Many people believe Mr. Richards is the best Scrabble player ever.

In the game of Scrabble, players take turns making the highest scoring word they can out of seven letter tiles that they have drawn. Each letter has a point score. Unusual letters, such as Q, X, or Z are worth more points. There are also special squares on the board that allow players to double or triple the score for a letter or a word.

A photo of a Spanish Scrabble board after a game. This is not a game from the recent tournament.
Nigel Richards won the Spanish World Scrabble Championship, even though he doesn’t speak Spanish. In Scrabble, players take turns making the highest scoring words they can from seven letter tiles. Above, a Spanish Scrabble board after a game. This game isn’t from the tournament.
(Source: The Omniversal Man [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.)

In November, the Spanish-language World Championships were held in Granada, Spain. Players from Spanish-speaking countries around the globe came to compete in the tournament. And so did Mr. Richards, who is from New Zealand, but now lives in Malaysia.

Mr. Richards is well known in the Scrabble world. He has won the World Scrabble Championship five times. That contest is in English. And so were most of the other Scrabble championships Mr. Richards has won in the US, the UK, and around the world.

Except, of course, for the French World Scrabble Championships, which Mr. Richards won in 2015. And again in 2018. And, no, Mr. Richards does not speak French, either.

😕

This image has not been loaded because of your cookie choices. To view the content, you can accept 'Non-necessary' cookies.

Mr. Richards has won the World Scrabble Championship five times. That contest is in English. But he has also won the French World Scrabble Championships twice, even though he doesn’t speak French. Above, Mr. Richards after winning the World Scrabble Championship in 2018.

Mr. Richards has an amazing memory and is very good at math. He seems to have a way of choosing the perfect word to give him the highest score.

Mr. Richards didn’t begin playing Scrabble until he was 28. His mother says she taught him to play Scrabble because she thought she would be able to beat him. She said that he was never very good at spelling and didn’t do well in his English classes.

But his other skills quickly allowed him to become a Scrabble champ. But how does he compete in languages he doesn’t speak? By memorizing all of the words in the Scrabble dictionary for that language. He doesn’t need to know the meaning of the words, just what words are allowed and how to spell them.

Nigel Richards, shortly before clinching the world champion title for the fourth time.
Mr. Richards has an amazing memory and is very good at math. He seems to have a way of choosing the perfect word to give him the highest score. He competes in other languages by memorizing the Scrabble dictionary for that language. Above, Mr. Richards in 2018.
(Source: Kingoflettuce, from Wikimedia Commons.)

His friend, Liz Fagerlund, says that Mr. Richards can look at a group of words and “they go into his brain as a picture.” She says he can remember them easily.

Even so, it’s hard work. These dictionaries have hundreds of thousands of words. Mr. Richards started memorizing Spanish words about a year ago. He also had to learn a new scoring system, since the letters in the Spanish version of Scrabble have different point values.

The results of the recent Spanish World Scrabble Championship. The name of Nigel Richards in position #1 is highlighted.
Mr. Richards started memorizing Spanish words about a year ago. His hard work paid off. In the tournament in Granada, he won 23 games out of the 24 games he played. Above, the results of the recent Spanish World Scrabble Championship.
(Source: FILEXICO.)

Mr. Richards’s hard work paid off. In the tournament in Granada, he won 23 games out of the 24 games he played. He defeated Benjamín Olaizola of Argentina (who does speak Spanish). Mr. Olaizola has won the Spanish World Scrabble Championship three times, and was the current champion until Mr. Richards beat him.

Despite his success, Mr. Richards is rather shy. He doesn’t talk to reporters, and he doesn’t talk about his Scrabble playing methods. He lets his results speak for themselves.

😕

This map has not been loaded because of your cookie choices. To view the content, you can accept 'Non-necessary' cookies.

Share:

Settings

Most news on NewsForKids.net is appropriate for all ages. When there is news that may not be suitable for all ages, we try to tag it. You can use the setting below to control whether content tagged in this manner is shown.