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If ‘The Ocho’ was a regular fixture on late-night TV it’s quite possible that Scrabble savant Nigel Richards would be a household name but as things stand, he is not. Within Scrabble circles, Nigel Richards is believed to be the greatest player ever born and despite holding multiple titles throughout the years he has still continued to amaze his fellow competitors by achieving what they believed to be the unachievable.
Richards hails from New Zealand. He is a native English speaker and doesn’t speak Spanish or French fluently. Despite that, he has previously won the French language Scrabble world championships… Twice… And he just won the 2024 Spanish language Scrabble world championship in Granada despite not speaking the language.
WaPo’s Kyle Melnick spoke with some of Nigel Richards’ fellow competitors about this Bobby Fisher-esque figure in the Scrabble world. Horacio Moavro is the treasurer of the International Federation of Scrabble in Spanish and he said many competitors doubted Nigel Richards’ chances at the world championship in Granada given that Nigel doesn’t habla Español but Nigel “shut our mouths completely” when he showed up and completely dominated the competition.
On his war path to winning the title, Nigel Richards competed in 24 games. He only lost once. Richards beasted his way through the field of 147 competitors, all of whom are the best Spanish language Scrabble players in the world.
According to the feature in WaPo, the competition’s runner-up finisher, Benjamín Olaizola, called Richards’ performance in a language he didn’t speak a “humiliation” for the native Spanish speakers who all vied for the title and lost.
To say that he is a ‘bit of a celebrity’ within the Scrabble world would be the understatement of the century. The author of Word Freak, a book about Scrabble competition, said that Nigel “shows us that we don’t understand the limit of the human brain, and he continues to, in his 50s, demonstrate that there are things the mind is able to do that we might’ve thought of as impossible.”
Unsurprisingly, there are countless videos on YouTube praising Nigel’s prowess on the Scrabble board. Many videos are from people calling out their ‘favorite Nigel Richards move’ across various competitions:
Despite being the biggest name in Scrabble, Richards is apparently a bit of a recluse. That is according to the WaPo feature which states Richards doesn’t do interviews and they tried to reach out to him but he couldn’t be reached for comment. But can we all agree that it is kind of more fun to watch clips of him dominating Scrabble than hearing from the man himself?
Obviously, Richards has won the English language Scrabble title many times over. He has won the French title 2x despite not speaking French. And this year marks the first time he took down the Spanish language title. He has also won the Thailand International King’s Cup, an English language crossword competition, 15x in 1999, twice in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019. Not too shabby…
Where does he stop? Is the sky truly the limit? Could Nigel Richards’ brain master any language within a specified period of time and then compete against the world’s best in Scrabble competition *and win*? The answer to that question certainly seems like ‘yes’ based on what I’ve read and learned about him in recent days.