Man Wins Spanish Word Puzzle Despite Not Knowing Meaning

Nigel Richards, 57, a New Zealander, beat out many competitors to win the 2024 Spanish Word Puzzle World Championship, despite not being able to speak the language.

Nearly a decade ago, in 2015, Mr Richards won the French word-matching championship despite being completely unable to converse in the language. His victory made international headlines at the time.

Nearly a decade ago, Mr. Richards won the French word-matching championship when he couldn't speak the language either. (Illustration: Unsplash).

Richards was already known as the world's best wordsmith and was considered a legend in the game. But surprisingly, a non-French speaker beat the best French wordsmiths to win the world title. Some people thought it was luck, but he repeated the feat. Recently, Richards has proven that he can do it in other languages ​​that he does not speak.

Last month, Mr Richards won the 2024 Spanish Word-Puzzle World Championship in Granada, despite not speaking the language. So how did he win? Just as he did in the French Word-Puzzle Championship, Mr Richards memorised a large number of Spanish words – without bothering to learn their meanings.

Yves Brenez, vice-president of the Belgian Word Decoding Federation, said of Richards in 2015: 'The challenge is a bit crazy, but he learned French vocabulary in just nine weeks. He is a fighting machine. For Richards, words are just combinations of letters. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but he came up with words (words with more than seven letters) that would take others 10 years to come up with.'

Somehow, Mr Richards has the ability to memorize hundreds of thousands of words and then use them effectively to defeat his opponents. John Baird, secretary of the Christchurch Scrabble Club, where Mr Richards first played the game, said he could look at a page and memorize entire words. Clearly, he has a knack for arranging letters.

Which language will Mr Richards win with next, as English word combinations are no longer enough to challenge him?

Scrabble is a word-matching game played between two or more players. When it is their turn, players place lettered tiles on a grid so that the words they create both vertically and horizontally make sense.