Scrabble mastermind Nigel Richards, a New Zealander, won the French-Language Scrabble World Championship without being able to speak the language.
At the tournament in Louvain, Belgium last Monday, the 48-year-old defeated a French player from Gabon during the last round of the word game finals, Huffington Post reports.
Without understanding any French word aside from "bonjour", Richards was able to claim victory over other French finalists after memorizing the entire French scrabble dictionary without any attempts of finding out each of their definitions.
"He won't know what [the words] mean, wouldn't be able to carry out a conversation in French I wouldn't think," said Richards' friend Liz Fagerlund, New Zealand Scrabble Association's former president told the New Zealand Herald.
Richards was able to memorize all the French words that contained two to 10 letters.
"I'm perhaps exaggerating a bit, but he comes up with scrabbled (words of seven or more letters) that others take 10 years to know," the competition's organizer, Yves Brenez told FranceTV. "To him words are just combinations of letters."
The French Scrabble Federation tweeted Richards' unusual and unprecedented championship.
After receiving a standing ovation, Richards expressed his gratitude with the help of a French translator.
Aside from his latest win, Richards has a long list of Scrabble championship titles including English Scrabble in 2007 and 2011, and five other U.S. National titles.
"He's like a computer with a big ginger beard," Scrabble representative Howard Warner, who's played the game against Richards told the Star Times. "You go to international tournaments and everyone's sitting around at the end of the day telling Nigel-stories. Of course, he's never there, so the legend grows."
Grown up as a mathematician, Richards only started playing Scrabble when his mother, Adrienne Fischer introduced the game to him at the age of 28.
Le #Scrabble francophone est entré dans une nouvelle dimension ce soir! L'ovation du public pour Nigel Richards. pic.twitter.com/67kmw8eIQ4
— Kévin Meng (@kevinspmeng) July 20, 2015
