New Zealand player Nigel Richards doesn’t speak Spanish and started memorizing the Scrabble word list a year ago. He defeated the current champion, Spanish-speaking Argentinian Benjamín Olaizola.
Scrabble is fun, but it’s not always the easiest game. Especially if you’re playing in a language that’s not your native language. So imagine What would it be like to play a competitive game of Scrabble for the first time in a language you don’t speak?.
That’s exactly what happened a man from new zealandPlayed in Spanish. And how could it be otherwise, the Spanish won the world championship in the board game!
Nigel RichardsProfessional player with five world titles in the English language, Didn’t let the language barrier get in his way and won the World Scrabble Championship in Granada (Spain), We lost only one of 24 matches. Inside In second place was the last champion, Argentine Benjamín Olaizola.A player who won 18 matches and spoke perfect Spanish.
Richards does not speak Spanish and I started memorizing the Scrabble word list Liz Fagerlund, a fellow Scrabble official in New Zealand, told the AP in that language a year ago.
“He doesn’t understand why others can’t do the same thing,” he explains. “You can see a block of words together “And once they enter your brain as images, you can remember them very easily.”
In fact, this isn’t the first time Richards has done this. In 2015, the Frenchman became the Scrabble world champion.even though he didn’t speak after studying his word list for nine weeks. He won the French championship again in 2018.
Other players said the Spanish victory by Richards, who was recognized as the best player of all time in international Scrabble during his three-decade career, was remarkable even by their standards. You need to adjust your game to compensate for different tile values in English and Spanish ScrabbleRichards also had to deal with thousands of additional seven-, eight- and nine-letter words in the Spanish language, requiring a different strategy.
Richards in 2008 First player in history to hold world, American and British titles simultaneouslyEven though in order to succeed in the United States, he had to “forget” 40,000 English words that were not included in the American Scrabble word list.
His mother, Adrienne Fischer, told a New Zealand newspaper in 2010 that Richards was not good at English at school and had never gone to university. took a mathematical rather than linguistic approach to the game. “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything other than the dictionary,” he said.
What motivates Richards, who now lives in Malaysia, is a secret because he never speaks to journalists. “I get a lot of requests from journalists who want to interview him, and he’s not interested,” Fagerlund says. “He doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.” Whatever one thinks, this is an impressive attack. well “turmoil” in Spanish. Worth 10 points on the Spanish Scrabble board. You’re welcome
