Nigel Richards, a Christchurch, New Zealand national who is now based in Malaysia is the current French Scrabble contest champion but surprisingly, he does not speak French. He did study the French Dictionary for nine weeks to prepare for the contest. At the same time he also learned French conjugations.
Mr. Richards already has so many Scrabble contest titles in his name. He’s been a U. S. national champion for five times, and has won the world’s biggest Scrabble contest held in Thailand, the King’s Cup, 12 times. Moreover, he’s an 11-time champion of the Singapore Open. He had bagged the English Scrabble title in 2007 and 2011 and repeated the feat in 2013.
The latest Scrabble competition
The final round, which was held on Monday in Louvain, Belgium saw Richards defeat Schélick Ilagou Rekawe from Gabon, a French-speaking country with a score of 2-1. He lost in the first game but prevailed in the last two to win the title.
Friends of Richards said that he does not speak any French at all. What he did to prepare was to learn the words. He does not even know what they mean and he would not be able to conduct a conversation in the language. What worked to his advantage, was his photographic memory.
He has built a reputation as one of the best Scrabble players in the world, according to one of his friends, Ms. Liz Fagerlund, who was the ex-president of the New Zealand Scrabble Association. She said that the Scrabble players from France would know of his ability, but she believed that the French contestants did not anticipate that he would be able to beat them.
18 years of playing Scrabble
The 46-year old Kiwi engineer’s total prize money from winning Scrabble competitions is estimated to be around $200,000. He started playing Scrabble with his mother when he was 28 years old.
The Belgian Scrabble Association vice president, Yves Brenez said that Richards could only utter the usual French greeting, “bonjour,” which he even pronounces with a Kiwi accent, as well as give the Scrabble scores in the French language because it was part of the game rules.
Some of the French words he used to secure the win included énouât, anatrope and miauler. He was also successful when he contested the word “ozonides” that his opponent used, pointing out that “ozonures” was the right French term for ozone derivatives.
Image Copyright : Wesley Saunders / 123rf.com
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