Nigel Richards, a New Zealander with a stellar Scrabble career, has claimed victory in the Spanish-language Scrabble World Championship. Remarkably, Richards does not speak Spanish, making his triumph a testament to his unparalleled mastery of the game and photographic memory.
Richards, who holds five English-language world titles, competed in Granada, Spain, in November, losing only one out of 24 games. This was his debut playing competitive Scrabble in Spanish. According to Liz Fagerlund, a New Zealand Scrabble official and close friend, Richards began memorizing the Spanish Scrabble word list just a year ago.
“He can’t understand why others can’t do the same thing,” Fagerlund said. “He visualizes blocks of words and recalls them as easily as if they were images.”
Defending champion Benjamín Olaizola of Argentina, a fluent Spanish speaker, came in second place, winning 18 games.
Richards is no stranger to overcoming linguistic barriers. In 2015, he secured the French-language Scrabble world title after only nine weeks of preparation, and he repeated the feat in 2018. His Spanish victory further cements his reputation as the greatest Scrabble player of all time, a status built over three decades of dominating the game.
Unlike English Scrabble, the Spanish version features different tile values and thousands of additional seven-, eight-, and nine-letter words, requiring Richards to adapt his strategy. Yet, his methodical and mathematical approach to the game proved invaluable.
Richards’ victories are legendary within the Scrabble community. In 2008, he became the first player to simultaneously hold the world, U.S., and British titles, an achievement that required him to adjust to the nuances of various national word lists.
His success has drawn widespread attention, with his games analyzed on YouTube by thousands of fans. However, Richards remains an enigmatic figure, shying away from the limelight.
“He’s never interested in interviews,” Fagerlund shared. “He doesn’t understand the fuss surrounding his achievements.”
Richards’ path to Scrabble stardom is as unconventional as his victories. His mother, Adrienne Fischer, once revealed that Richards didn’t excel in English during school and never attended university. Instead, he adopted a mathematical approach to Scrabble, treating it as a puzzle rather than a linguistic exercise.
Fagerlund recalled Richards’ first visit to a Scrabble club in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the age of 28. Just two years later, he cycled 220 miles to a national championship, won on his first attempt, and cycled back home.
