How Spanish Scrabble world champion beat competitors – without speaking the language

This may leave you at a loss for words.

A New Zealand man has won the world Scrabble championship for Spanish words – despite not speaking the language.

Nigel Richards – who now holds an impressive five English-language titles for the game, plus two for winning in French after a nine-week crash course – was bored dominating just those versions of Scrabble.

Although he couldn’t talk to opponents at the Spanish Championships in Granada, Spain, last month, Richards destroyed the competition, winning 23 of 24 matches.

“He can’t understand why other people can’t do the same,” Richards’ friend Liz Fagerlund told The Associated Press.

“He can look at a block of words together and once they go into his brain as a picture, he can just remember it very easily.”

As the language trifecta was completed, the other contestants quickly realized that this was a high achievement, even by the standards of Richards, who now lives in Malaysia.

Along with adjusting his strategy to handle different values ​​of Scrabble tiles in Spanish compared to English, Richards also had to adjust for thousands of additional seven-, eight- and nine-letter words, the AP reported.

Talk about a mouthful.

Previously, in 2008, he had to “forget” 40,000 large British English words that the American version of the game does not recognize. However, he proudly received titles in both English dialects simultaneously.

On YouTube, fans review and analyze his moves like Yankee fans replaying an Aaron Judge home run. A video from earlier this year sees a “god-like” move made by Richards.

Ironically, Richards’ mother, Adrienne Fischer, said in 2010 that her son did not excel in English at school and that he never went to college.

“I don’t think he’s ever read a book except the dictionary,” she said.

Instead, Fischer said her son’s success comes from taking a mathematical strategy in the word game.

Unfortunately for the world, Richards doesn’t give interviews, so his acting ambitions remain a mystery to the public.

“I get a lot of requests from reporters who want to interview him and he’s not interested,” Fagerlund said.

“He doesn’t understand what all the hoo-ha is about.”