New Zealander Nigel Richards, who doesn't speak Spanish, studied for a year to win the Spanish world Scrabble championship
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish , a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish -language world title — despite the language barrier that stopped him from chatting with his opponents.
Forced to adjust his gameplay to compensate for different tile values in English and Spanish Scrabble, Richards also had to contend with thousands of additional seven, eight and nine letter words in the Spanish language -– which demand a different strategy.Plane passenger baffled by what she found left behind on a Delta flight: 'We’ve all been there'
Scrabble does not require players to know the definitions of words, only what combinations of letters are allowed in a country’s version of the game, but native speakers have “a huge leg up,” American Scrabble player Will Anderson said in a video summarizing Richards’ Spanish win.In 2015, he became the French language Scrabble world champion, despite not speaking French, after studying the word list for nine weeks. He took the French title again in 2018.
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A New Zealander studied for a year to win the Spanish world Scrabble title. He doesn’t speak SpanishA New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title.
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