This could leave you at a loss for words.
A New Zealand man has won the Scrabble world championship for Spanish words — despite not speaking the language.
Nigel Richards — who now holds an impressive five English-language titles for the game, plus two for winning in French after a nine-week week crash course — became bored dominating just those versions of Scrabble.
Although he couldn’t converse with opponents at the Spanish championship in Granada, Spain, last month, Richards c-r-u-s-h-e-d the competition, winning 23 of 24 games.
“He can’t understand why other people can’t just do the same thing,” Richards’ friend Liz Fagerlund told the Associated Press.
“He can look at a block of words together and once they go into his brain as a picture he can just recall that very easily.”
As he completed the language trifecta, other competitors quickly recognized that this was a lofty feat, even by the standards of Richards, who now lives in Malaysia.
Along with adjusting his strategy to handle different Scrabble tile values in Spanish as opposed to English, Richards needed to adjust for thousands of additional seven-, eight- and nine-letter words as well, the AP reported.
Talk about a mouthful.
Previously, in 2008, he had to “forget” a whopping 40,000 British English words that the U.S. version of the game doesn’t recognize. Nevertheless, he proudly took home titles in both English dialects simultaneously.
On YouTube, fans rewatch and analyze his moves like Yankee fans replaying an Aaron Judge home run. A video from earlier this year looks at a “godlike” move Richards pulled off.
Ironically, Richards’ mother, Adrienne Fischer, said in 2010 that her son was no English standout in school — and that he never went to college.
“I don’t think he’s ever read a book, apart from the dictionary,” she quipped.
Instead, Fischer said her son’s success comes by taking a mathematical strategy at the word game.
Unfortunately for the world, Richards doesn’t do interviews, so his ambition for playing remains a mystery to the public.
“I get lots of requests from journalists wanting to interview him and he’s not interested,” Fagerlund said.
“He doesn’t understand what all the hoo-ha is about.”
