Scrabble Star Wins Spanish World Title Despite Not Speaking Spanish (theguardian.com) 28
Nigel Richards, a New Zealand-born Scrabble legend, won the Spanish World Scrabble Championship despite not speaking Spanish. The Guardian reports: The Spanish title wasn't the first time Richards' Scrabble skills had shattered linguistic barriers: in 2015 he made headlines when he won the francophone world championships without being able to speak or understand French. Instead he reportedly memorised the entire French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks. [...]
After nearly three decades of playing Scrabble competitively, Richards is widely viewed as the best player of all time, with some chalking up his skills to his photographic memory and ability to quickly calculate mathematical probabilities. Intensely private and swift to turn down interviews, very little is known about his personal life. His reclusive nature -- along with his decades of Scrabble conquests and coups -- have turned him into a legend of sorts for some.
After nearly three decades of playing Scrabble competitively, Richards is widely viewed as the best player of all time, with some chalking up his skills to his photographic memory and ability to quickly calculate mathematical probabilities. Intensely private and swift to turn down interviews, very little is known about his personal life. His reclusive nature -- along with his decades of Scrabble conquests and coups -- have turned him into a legend of sorts for some.
Not many New Zealanders speak spanish (Score:1)
Since the spanish didn't discover NZ.
Not surprising as Spain is as far as you can get from NZ without leaving the planet.
(If you drill a hole through the centre of the Earth from Madrid, you will end up in the middle of The North Island.)
Not all brains are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm happy for him and hope he can continue to live 'under the radar'.
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Scrabble is about those weird words (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a poetry competition the best words for scrabble are some weird words with traits such as being the right length or having the right letters. A native speaker wouldn't know many of them.
Re: Scrabble is about those weird words (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sure, but not because they're native speakers.
At this point Richards' handicap would be to keep straight which weird scrabble words are from English/French/Spanish.
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Sure, but not because they're native speakers.
At this point Richards' handicap would be to keep straight which weird scrabble words are from English/French/Spanish.
He appears to be quite good at compartmentalizing word lists. One article I read pointed out he had to ‘forget’ 40K British English words to win the US championship.
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"One article I read pointed out he had to âforgetâ(TM) 40K British English words to win the US championship."
For example, he couldn't use "Orks".
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:I'm pretty sure anyone competing in the latter round of these tournaments likely had also memorized many of those high point words."
I'm absolutely sure they had. This, however, would be because they were professional Scrabble players, not because they spoke Spanish. I'm sure the non-Spanish speaking champion also memorized all those words.
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Using words is certainly the overwhelmingly sane choice: the game would
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However, a native speaker certainly has a leg up in memorizing the dictionary. Not just being able to recite it as a list, but being able to look around the board and instantly perceive where those words could fit. Familiarity would help. That, or a brain like a computer.
Math game impersonating a word game (Score:4, Insightful)
My experience with scrabble is that it rewards intuitive math skills more than simply having a large vocabulary or being good with words. You need to understand the probabilities of drawing certain letters, their value, and how to optimize their usage within the multipliers on the board more than just knowing a lot of permitted letter strings.
So, it's not terribly surprising that someone who is really good at Scrabble could win in a language they don't understand provided they have memorized a sufficient number of acceptable letter strings. You could imagine an alternative version of scrabble with no letters at all. You could do it as entirely with non-verbal symbols and numbers with a rulebook listing allowed symbol combinations. Of course, that would make the game quite difficult to play for anybody who has not spent an extensive period of time memorizing the acceptable symbol combinations. Wouldn't work as a parlor game, but probably would work as well as current Scrabble for high-level international competition if you could find sufficiently dedicated players.
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There's also a significant luck element to the game. Your opponent drawing most of the blanks and letter S is pretty much a shoo-in to win. Naturally it should balance out over many games but there have been times I've cursed my opponent for their luck in the draw.
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It's similar to poker (absent the bluff element) being a mixed game of skill and luck. The best players know how to maximize their hand. Over many hands, the luck element will even out, which is how you can get tournaments with consistent stars.
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Actually there is a bluff element too -- in tournament Scrabble if an invalid word is challenged off the board, you lose a turn. If you challenge a valid word, YOU lose your turn. There are only 10-15 turns in a typical game so this is a big penalty, and opens the opportunity* to bluff with plausible-sounding words.
*not against Nigel Richards who probably has 95%+ of the dictionary in his head.
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There's also a significant luck element to the game. Your opponent drawing most of the blanks and letter S is pretty much a shoo-in to win. Naturally it should balance out over many games but there have been times I've cursed my opponent for their luck in the draw.
Luck matters a bit, but it's not overwhelming:
Since beginning his competitive career in 1996, he has won about 75% of his tournament games, collecting an estimated US$200,000 in prize money. [wikipedia.org]
Remember, some of the 25% he lost wasn't from being unlucky, sometimes he would just get outplayed.
Also, with $200k earnings over 30 years I hope he has a day job.
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Is there any difference between the different language versions apart from the dictionary?
I mean some of the 'rare' letters are more common in other languages - do they have the same points as in the English version?
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The letters have different points [wikipedia.org] in different languages. For example, "W" scores 4 points in English, but 10 points in French, as very few words contain it. I played Scrabble in French with a friend and his mother, and they told me before the game that "won" (Korean currency) is the best way of getting rid of a "W" in French Scrabble. For some reason I still remember that advice many decades later! The game was quite an ego boost, as my score wasn't too terrible, at about halfway to the points the native
...and grammar. (Score:2)
One thing that interests me about this guy is how easy it would be for him to actually learn French or Spanish, given how may words he knows. I suppose it might be a long slog to match them up to real world meanings rather than just a string of letters.
That, and also the grammar necessary to build correct (or at least intelligible) sentences.
And for French, I can vouch that the grammar is pretty fucked up, there are more exception that rules, and the exceptions have their own exceptions ("It's exception-turtles all the way down!")
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chuck woolery should be the winner! (Score:2)
chuck woolery should be the winner!
It's probably convenient, but is it necessary? (Score:2)
Let's differentiate between 'players' and 'competitors' in the scrabble universe.
A scrabble 'player' relies on their knowledge of common words in the language of the game being played and will likely have a short, memorized list of obscure, but useful scrabble words picked up from previous games.
A scrabble 'competitor' instead focuses their energies on memorizing all the known, 'official' scrabble words and routinely plays obscure, high point-value words at every opportunity.
A 'player' would quickly
His Spanish (Score:2)
All of his words were taco, burrito, grande, fiesta, salsa, tequila...