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 — despite the language barrier that stopped him from chatting with his opponents.
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 — despite the language barrier that stopped him from chatting with his opponents.
Nigel Richards, a professional player who holds five English-language world titles, won the Spanish world Scrabble championships in Granada, Spain, in November, losing only one game out of 24. Richards speaks no Spanish and 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.”
In second place was defending champion Benjamín Olaizola of Argentina, who won 18 of his games -– and does speak Spanish.
