Scrabble Champion Shatters Language Barriers and Stuns the World
February 26, 2025
During a recent TWFH meeting, one of our writers shared a fascinating article from Yahoo News about Nigel Richards, a New Zealand-born Scrabble champion who recently won the Spanish World Scrabble Championship—despite not speaking Spanish.
The article sparked some lively discussion, especially given the surprise many expressed over Richards’ victory. Spanish media outlets even described it as an “incredible humiliation,” but for those familiar with Richards’ career, the win was unsurprising.
Known as the “Tiger Woods of Scrabble,” Richards has dominated the game for decades, winning multiple world titles in English.
What makes his victories truly remarkable is his ability to triumph in languages he doesn’t speak. In 2015, he won the Francophone World Scrabble Championship after memorizing the entire French Scrabble dictionary in just nine weeks.
He repeated this success in 2018, proving his skills weren’t a fluke. Richards’ incredible memory and ability to calculate probabilities make him an intimidating force at the Scrabble table, no matter the language.
Today, Richards is regarded as the greatest Scrabble player of all time, his achievements so legendary that he has become a near-mythical figure in the Scrabble community. Despite his reclusive nature and preference for staying out of the spotlight, Richards’ unparalleled skills continue to make waves in the world of competitive Scrabble.