New Zealand genius wins Spanish Scrabble title without knowing the language
Professional Scrabble master memorized Spanish dictionary and won world championship in Granada. Non-spanish speaking player beat native speakers in 23 out of 24 games during his first-ever Spanish tournament
A mind-blowing achievement shook the Scrabble world last fall; when Nigel Richards – a non-Spanish speaking player from New Zealand dominated the Spanish-language world championships in Granada
The five-time English Scrabble champion showed remarkable skill winning 23 out of 24 matches (which is an almost perfect score) against native Spanish speakers. What makes this win extra-ordinary is that Richards couldnt even chat with his opponents due to the language barrier
The New Zealand word-master spent roughly a year preparing for this unique challenge – he simply memorized the Spanish Scrabble dictionary without understanding the actual meanings of words. His friend Liz Fagerlund (a New Zealand Scrabble official) mentioned that this was Richards first-ever competitive game in Spanish; making his victory even more note-worthy
His unique approach to mastering board-games demonstrates an exceptional memory and pattern-recognition abilities – proving that sometimes understanding a language isnt necessary to excel at word-based competitions
