Nigel Richards wins French Scrabble competition, can’t speak French

Liz Fagerlund, former president of the New Zealand Scrabble Association and a friend of Richards, told the New Zealand Herald that the French Scrabble players would have known about Richards’ record in the English Scrabble world going into the competition.

Nigel Richards defeated rival Schélick Ilagou Rekawe, from Francophone Gabon, in the championship final in Louvain Belgium on Monday.

While he doesn’t speak the language, Richards picked up a French dictionary eight weeks ago and just started cramming all the words into his head.

In a tweet, the French Scrabble federation hailed Richards’ win under such unusual circumstances as unprecedented. After all, he doesn’t speak French.

“When he was learning to talk, he was not interested in words, just numbers”, she told the Star Times.

Scrabble is a board game played by two to four players.

One of the contestants who Richards beat during the French tournament reportedly joked “are you an extra-terrestrial or something” when witnessing his incredible ability.

And if winning the 2015 French version wasn’t enough, Richards has won the English-language World Championship in 2007 and 2011 as well.

New Zealander Nigel Richards spent just two months memorising thousands of French words – many of which he doesn’t even understand.

At the tournament, Richards showed the same strategic genius that led the website 538 to call him “the best Scrabble player on Earth”, limiting his opponents’ scoring chances and squeezing the best out of the letters he’s drawn. His mother introduced him to the game, frustrated that his card-counting had turned their Sunday games of 500 into a no-contest. “Nigel, I love you”, it added.

Despite his poor affinity with language, he turned out to be a prodigious talent, and in 1997 won the national champs on his first attempt.