This guy just won the French-language Scrabble championship… and he doesn’t speak French

This man won the French-language Scrabble
world championship recently, despite not
being able to speak any French (well, he
probably knows ‘bonjour’).
Nigel Richards, who is from Christchurch in
New Zealand, defeated a guy who actually
speaks French at the final in Belgium on
Monday.
While he doesn’t speak the language,
Richards picked up a French dictionary eight
weeks ago and just started cramming all the
words into his head.
Liz Fagerlund, a good friend of Richards,
said: ‘He doesn’t speak French at all, he just
learnt the words.
‘He won’t know what they mean, he wouldn’t
be able to carry out a conversation in French
I wouldn’t think.’
As any seasoned Scrabble player knows, the
game has as much to do with tactics as it
does with having a large vocabulary, but to
not know the language you are victorious in
is pretty impressive (as is Mr Richards’ facial
hair, may we add).

Something simple like dialect obviously can’t
hold Richards back, and he has won five US
National scrabble titles and the world
Scrabble Championship three times.
Despite being known as the finest Scrabble
player alive, Ms Fagerlund, who is also the
former president of the New Zealand
Scrabble Association, said Richards’ win in
Belgium was ‘quite remarkable’.
One of the contestants who Richards beat
during the French tournament reportedly
joked ‘are you an extra-terrestrial or
something’ when witnessing his amazing
ability.