A former English Scrabble world champion, Mr Richards appears to have learnt the French dictionary and verb conjugations in just nine weeks in order to win.
Advertisement
Scrabble was created in 1931.
Scrabble experts suggest the competitive game has more to do with memory and mathematics than linguistics.
Stefan Fatsis, author of a book about the classic board game – “Word Freak” – tells Newshour about the man dubbed “the Tiger Woods of Scrabble”.
He’d memorized the entire French Scrabble dictionary in only nine weeks though the words mean nothing to him.
“He has learned no language logic, just a succession of letter sequences giving rise to words”.
“There have been great Thai scrabble players who barely speak English…so it is not a function of your native speaking ability, it’s a function of being able to process the order in which the letters appear in a particular word”.
During the match, which he won by two games to nil, he even successfully challenged his rival Schelick Ilagou Rekawe’s use of a form of the verb “fureter” (to snoop), The Guardian reported. Along the way, Richards also successfully challenged incorrect words and played with incisive speed.
The French Scrabble federation described Richards’ victory as a first in a tweet after the final. “It’s a lot more than just memorizing the words”.
Lest you suspect that this year’s championship might have been lacking strong competitors, the Observateur assures us, “Tout le gratin est présent” – calling these players from France, Switzerland, Senegal and elsewhere the cream of the crop.
“To him words are just combinations of letters”, Yves Brenez, the competition’s organizer, told FranceTV. Therefore, despite knowing every single world in the French language, Richards is unaware of their meaning. He has won the (English-language) world championships three times.
Advertisement
He’s won titles in the United Kingdom and USA as well.
