NEW ZEALAND MAN WINS SPANISH LANGUAGE SCRABBLE CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT KNOWING A WORD OF SPANISH

Having a large vocabulary is usually necessary to be a great Scrabble player. After all, you might have to use the odd letters you're given to make up obscure words. A recent Scrabble championship, however, seems to indicate that you may not even need to speak a language fluently to win. Just look at what Nigel Richards, a man from New Zealand, did. Despite not knowing a single word of Spanish, he recently won the Spanish World Scrabble Championships.

Although this may seem like an exception, Richards has accomplished something similar before. In 2015 and 2018, he won the French-language Scrabble world championship by defeating native French speakers. He won the World Championship in English Scrabble in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019, the last year he played. He is also an expert in the game. He is now considered the best tournament Scrabble player of all time as a result of all these honours.

However, how can someone win a global Scrabble tournament without using any of the language? Richards, 57, spent nine weeks studying and learning the dictionary in preparation for both titles. This combined with his thirty years of Scrabble experience proved to be sufficient to help him advance through the competition's twenty-four rounds.

The contestant who finished second to Richards in the tournament, Benjamín Olaizola, told Cadena Ser, "This is someone with very particular, incredible abilities; he's a gifted guy." "We are discussing a New Zealander who has brought home at least five English championships." Eric Salvador Tchouyo, the world champion Scrabble player, has characterized his style as "playing against a computer," and when he shows up, his opponents know they are competing for second place at best.

Some in Spain, where the tournament was held, have called Richards' win a "humiliation," but Scrabble experts commend him for his skills because the winner personifies all the advantages of playing the game.

Scrabble is like "medicine for memory problems," according to Antonio Álvarez, ambassador for the Spanish World Scrabble Championship. "You need to practice mental acuity, math, word recognition, and determining which words are more valuable," he says. For this reason, it is beneficial for children's intellectual growth to play games like chess and to practice memory with older adults.