Nigel Richards , a New Zealand indigen based in Malaysia , is a Scrabble master to be reckoned with . He has won the U.S. National Scrabble Championship five times and the World English Scrabble Championship three meter . He recently advance the King ’s Cup , an annual English Scrabble tournament hold in Thailand , for the 11th time . Where does a winner turn next for a challenge ? Another language .
To prepare for the Gallic Scrabble man championship , of late held in Louvain , Belgium , Richards studied the Gallic Scrabble dictionary for about eight week . So exhaustively did he internalize it that he couldpull out wordslikeanatrope(a industrial plant biology full term ) andenouât(the third person of the imperfect subject ofénouer , to undo knots ) when he needed them . He even at one point challenged a parole used by an adversary , ozonides(ozone derivative ) , right take down that the proper French terminal figure wasozonures .
But his Gallic skills begin and terminate within the game . His protagonist Liz Fagerlund told theNew Zealand Heraldthat “ he does n’t speak French at all , he just learnt the words . He wo n’t know what they signify , would n’t be able-bodied to convey out a conversation in French I would n’t retrieve . ”
The ability to play Scrabble in a spoken language one does n’t utter is n’t as unusual as it might seem . In Thailand , where English Scrabble is very popular , many of the good player aremuch better at Scrabble than they are at speaking English . But being able to memorize a whole dictionary in a subject of weeks ? And then being able-bodied to deploy that knowledge competently in a competitive situation ? That is extremely unusual . And that ’s what makes Richards , in the parole of YvesBrenez , vice President of the United States of the Belgian Scrabble Federation , “ a Scrabble war machine . ” Or , as Scrabble expert Stefan Fatsissays , he ’s like “ Tiger Woods at his peak — and then Tiger saying , ‘ I think I ’ll also take up tennis , ’ and then win Wimbledon the next year . ”
