A New Zealand man hailed as a Scrabble phenom dominated the Spanish World Scrabble Championships \u2013 despite reportedly not speaking the language. <\/p>\n
Nigel Richards claimed victory at this year\u2019s tournament in Granada, Spain last month, Reuters reported, showcasing once again his remarkable abilities to outperform even native speakers in their own languages. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an incredible humiliation,\u201d Benjam\u00edn Olaizola, who came second to Richards, told Spanish radio network La Cadena SER, calling his opponent a \u201cgifted man\u201d with \u201cvery specific capabilities.\u201d <\/p>\n
Richards, who is in his 50s, bested more than 145 opponents from across the world, including Argentina, Venezuela, Spain and Colombia, winning 22 consecutive matches, the Federaci\u00f3n Internacional de L\u00e9xico en Espa\u00f1ol said on Instagram. <\/p>\n
Widely known as the \u201cTiger Woods of Scrabble,\u201d Richards has won nearly 200 tournaments, including multiple world titles, and is ranked No. 1 by the World English-language Scrabble Player\u2019s Association (WESPA). <\/p>\n
But his Scrabble talents have long extended beyond the board of his native tongue. <\/p>\n
Richards gained international fame in 2015 for winning the French-language title, when he reportedly knew little beyond \u201cBonjour.\u201d <\/p>\n
Fagerlund met Richards when he joined the Christchurch Scrabble club in 1996 in New Zealand. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe started playing Scrabble with his mom because she got sick of him beating her at cards. She thought she might be able to win, since he was no good at English in school,\u201d Fagerlund says. \u201cHe came to the club and was very soon beating everyone there.\u201d <\/p>\n
Richards rarely gives interviews. He is characterized in the media as a recluse, who likes to bike, and doesn\u2019t smoke, drink, watch TV or listen to the radio. <\/p>\n
Runner-up Olaizola said Richards had a propensity for using complex words, even in a foreign language, and a unique strategy for catching his competition off guard. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a hand that was the most obvious one, the one that a computer would give to you, and he didn\u2019t use it,\u201d Olaizola told La Cadena SER. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A New Zealand man hailed as a Scrabble phenom dominated the Spanish World Scrabble Championships \u2013 despite reportedly not speaking the language. Nigel Richards claimed victory at this year\u2019s tournament in Granada, Spain last month, Reuters reported, showcasing once again his remarkable abilities to outperform even native speakers in their own languages. \u201cThis is an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}