Man wins Spanish and French scrabble championships despite not speaking the languages

A man has gained overnight fame for the second time after winning the Spanish World Scrabble Championship – nine years after winning the French World Scrabble Championship.

The twist? He’s from New Zealand and doesn’t speak either of the languages.

Nigel Richards is the man of the moment, winning the 2024 edition of the tournament in Granada, Spain, in November.

Reuters reported that the New Zealander triumphed, with his outstanding linguistic abilities coming to the fore, beating out several native speakers once again.

Richards spectacularly beat out over 145 opponents from around the world, from Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Spain and Venezuela, including a winning run of 22 matches in a row, according to the Federación Internacional de Léxico en Español on Instagram.

Benjamín Olaizola lost to Richards, who is in his 50s, in the final, and told Spanish radio network La Cadena SER: “This is an incredible humiliation.”

He also called the New Zealander a ‘gifted man’ that has ‘specific capabilities’.

Speaking more about his willingness to use complex words, Olaizola further explained: “He had a hand that was the most obvious one, the one that a computer would give to you, and he didn’t use it.”

Richards is so well known in the community, in fact, that he has garnered a nickname: the ‘Tiger Woods of Scrabble’.

And it’s not for nothing either, because on top of his two World Scrabble Championship wins, he is ranked no.1 by the World English-language Scrabble Player’s Association (WESPA), having won almost 200 tournaments in his career.

Among his wins was his first famous win, the 2015 French-language title, where he claimed that he only knew ‘Bonjour’ in the language, and not much else.

All he did, according to friend and supported Liz Fagerlund, is memorise the French Scrabble dictionary, albeit for just nine weeks.

It still contained near 400,000 words, as Fagerlund explained to CNN: “It’s most likely that he’s wired differently; he doesn’t even study the pages word by word.

“He can look at a page full of words and absorb them all.”

The two met at Christchurch Scrabble club back in 1996 in their native, as Fagerlund recalled: “He started playing Scrabble with his mom because she got sick of him beating her at cards. She thought she might be able to win, since he was no good at English in school.”

She revealed that he was ‘soon beating everyone’ at the club, clearly having a talent from a young age.

Despite the fame, Richards doesn’t really give interviews, keeping to himself, though he likes to cycle, and doesn’t smoke, drink, watch TV or even listen to the radio.