Zeba Sultan
Nigel Richards, o “Tiger Woods do scrabble”
A New Zealander, hailed as a Scrabble phenomenon, dominated the World Scrabble Championship in Spain despite allegedly not speaking the language.
“This is an incredible humiliation,” he said. Benjamin Olaizolawho came second in a ranking of 146 people, on Spanish radio calling his opponent a “gifted man” with “very specific abilities“.
The legendary Nigel Richards He is from New Zealand, is 57 years old, and is known as “Tiger Woods do Scrabble” and now won almost 200 tournamentsincluding several world titles. It is number 1 in the World English Scrabble Players Association (WESPA) ranking.
This was no exception — even though I don’t understand any Spanish at all.
In the famous word alignment game tournament, Richard beat dozens of competitors from Spanish-speaking countries, including Argentines, Colombians and Spaniards.
But this championship was no exception. According to , Richards gained international fame in 2015, after winning the French language titlewhen the New Zealander supposedly knew how to say little more than “bonjour” (good morning).
“Most likely he have a different mind; he doesn’t even study the pages word for word,” said his longtime friend Liz Fagerlund to CNN. “He can look at a page full of words and absorb them all.”
“He started playing Scrabble with his mother because she was fed up with him beating her at cards. She thought maybe she could win, since he wasn’t good at English at school“, says Fagerlund. “He came to the club and quickly started winning over everyone”.
Now, he’s a scrabble genius.
Below, we leave the only known interview with the mythical scrabble player:
