Nigel Richards, Conqueror of (Scrabble) Worlds

Welcome to Episode 31 of Scrabble History, a series where I break down some of the most incredible plays, epic rivalries, and amazing moments in Scrabble's rich competitive history.

In November 2024, Nigel Richards added another unbelievable Scrabble accomplishment to his already endless list of accolades - victory at the Spanish language World Scrabble Championship. He was already the only player to win world titles in more than one language after his French language win in 2015, which he repeated in 2018. But in this video, I explain why his Spanish language victory might be his most impressive one yet.

Sometime soon, I plan to resume streaming on my Twitch channel:

I also have a weekly show on the official Scrabble Twitch channel (Tuesdays 3-5 PM ET):

[wanderer]

Couple notes on this one:
- Preemptive apologies for all my poor Spanish pronunciations. I tried, but I'm sure I got many words and names wrong.
(Edit: I misidentified Carlos Garcia as Carlos Gonzalez in the Duplicate portion - sorry for the error!)
- Huge thanks to Cesar Del Solar of Macondo/Woogles.io for a great deal of help with various stats & analyses.

[MikeDolanFliss]

I love the statistic about his 4 challenges. "That's not a word ... in YOUR language, which I don't speak."

[itskmillz]

Nigel finding a move that takes an engine hours to find in a language he doesn't speak is beyond absurd

[moch]

Nigel Richards is to Spanish Scrabble as Nigel Richards is to English Scrabble.

[Thegods]

I'm beginning to doubt Macondo is a real AI. I personally think it is just Nigel on the other end. The reason it took hours to determine Lo was the right choice was because Nigel was busy memorizing another dictionary in a language he doesn't know.

[Heamer]

Casuals: There's no way he can win a championship in yet another language.

Nigel: Sostenga mi cerveza.

[yoitszaitz]

Man that max guy was playing really well

[glenm]

Firat three rounds: Wow, Nigel is practically a Scrabble-playing computer.
11:15 : Huh, guess he's not.

[minhkhanhvu]

forever grateful that Nigel is the GOAT of scrabble. He's not arrogant or controversial, but rather mysterious and down to earth. His techniques are unconvensional and yet he blows everyone out the window. It's almost like he's a character in a novel lmao

[fingerprince_]

Memorizing 11 letter words in a language you don't speak is utterly preposterous. Of course his superhuman memory is well-established but finding out he studied and can recall 11 letter words OTB still blows my mind.

[alb]

It's absolutely insane how good Nigel is at Scrabble. He can travel to YOUR country, play Scrabble in YOUR mother tongue, play the game perfectly and even call you out on phony words in a language that he doesn't even speak, not to mention doing all of this without a computer to utilize the powerful tools that people can use to improve their gameplay.

[SocialistSteve]

I love how this guy turns up to competitions, absolutely destroys eveybody, refuses to elaborate, then leaves on his bike until it's time to do it all again. Actual chad behaviour

[Davidcube]

You know it’s crazy when Will says “a shitload of points” 😂

[MinhAIPet]

Plot twist: Nigel didn't even speaks English. That's why he rarely takes interview.

[ericfox]

This is so beyond ridiculous for such a vast number of nuanced reasons, I feel like it takes a lot of Scrabble experience to even be able to understand the depth of how unbelievable Nigel's accomplishments are. Every hobby's community has its members who are known for being the best in the world, but Nigel's level of Scrabble mastery is damn near impossible. It's scary to think of a world where he never happened to stumble upon the game.

[dayzeed]

It's times like these where it really feels like Nigel's genius knows no bounds. That bit at the end about him finding a play that a perfect engine took _hours_ to compute (in a foreign language, to boot) is especially impeccable.

[Hazy_Heart]

3:18
-Spanish Debut
-Skimmed the dictionary once
-Gets 2 record-setting perfect scores
-Refuses to elaborate
-Leaves
-Comes back
-Goes 23-1 (Beating the engine as usual)
-No one even bothers asking him to elaborate
-Leaves

[TonyLeah]

Amazing video Will - it is hard to clearly explain how mind-blowingly superhuman Nigel's accomplishments are, but you did it masterfully. Thank you also for touching on Nigel's (only) two errors in the duplicate event. One, as you point out, was an error in notation after he had found the correct word. The other error is explained in more detail in the article by Jose Fernandez in scrabble-santandreu. You showed a screenshot of part of this article at 14:20. Here is a quote from the Google translation of the article: "A day and a half after the results of the duplicate were published, I told him that he had come second, thinking that he already knew, but it was the first news he had. During the first duplicate, he was sitting at one end and someone standing prevented him from seeing the tilde of the Ñ. He raised his hand, but he did not dare to make an oral appeal and this circumstance was not noticed because he was in a very cornered spot. A few seconds from the end, he was able to see the Ñ, but in extremis he put an invalid word, DAÑIA. He did not give any importance to this fact, he only said “it's ok, it's just a game."" This explanation makes Nigel's accomplishment even more astounding (if that's possible). In the one game of classical Scrabble that Nigel lost - from looking at the score sheet it seems to me he was forced to exchange four times!

[evanyurko]

I can’t even begin to comprehend Nigel. I know everyone will get worked up about Nigel’s mastery of the dictionary particularly at longer words greater than 10 letters, which in English no one even really bothers with and yet Nigel seemingly has complete mastery with in MULTIPLE LEXICONS. His ability for retention of words when every single other expert has to study constantly in order to not have retention loss in one lexicon. And yet this would seem to suggest he has complete mastery in Spanish, French, Collins, and NWL (American English). And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to diminish how completely unfathomable that is, but in my opinion the words aren’t what’s most impressive. It’s how he can seamlessly switch strategy wise, play finding wise, and evaluate leaves correctly in other lexicons WITHOUT AN ENGINE. Only with his own intuition. And he still only spends about a minute or 2 on each turn, which would seem to suggest that he sees all the options (even if it’s a disconnected 10 or 11 letter word that no one else on earth would find) very quickly and is just choosing between them. That kind of play finding, and the ability to adjust extremely complex strategy like endgames or pre-endgames that engines need hours to compute, is why Nigel is truly an Alien.

[SeraphimKnight]

Imagine being a scrabble grandmaster in your native language and then you see Nigel walk into the room for a tournament you're competing in