A New Zealander studied for a year to win the Spanish world Scrabble title. He doesn’t speak Spanish
A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title
By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY
Published - Dec 11, 2024, 02:42 PM ET
Last Updated - Dec 16, 2024, 04:59 PM EST
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title.
Nigel Richards, a professional player who holds five English-language world titles, won the Spanish world Scrabble championships in Granada, Spain, in November, losing one game out of 24.
Richards started memorizing the language's Scrabble word list a year ago, his friend Liz Fagerlund -– a New Zealand Scrabble official -– told The Associated Press.
“He can’t understand why other people can’t just do the same thing,” she said. “He can look at a block of words together, and once they go into his brain as a picture he can just recall that very easily.”
