World Scrabble champion and undisputed leader in the English language since 2007, Nigel Richards became the best in French in 2015 without even speaking the language. This year he dominated the Spanish competition. This not-talkative Scrabble player manipulates words on a board like no one else. A real phenomenon, even an enigma that the champion of Cameroonian origin Eric Salvador Tchouyo and the journalist Jean Baptiste Morel try to explain to RFI.
“ Just mentioning his name makes me tingle, because it’s a phenomenon. » Cameroonian Eric Salvador Tchouyo was world Scrabble champion in 2021 and he is full of praise for Nigel Richards: “ I often say that it would make a good thesis subject for medical doctoral students, because it is incomprehensible that we can have such a capacity for memory in a language that we do not speak. And if I speak of him with so much admiration, a champion myself, it is because he is someone exceptional. »
Same fascination with Jean-Baptiste Morel, editor-in-chief of actu.fr and Scrabble player: “ More than nine years ago, we saw him arrive in the French-speaking world without knowing how to speak French and he crushed us all. Obviously, I developed a passion for this character, because we all train like crazy to try to learn as much as possible and according to legend it took him nine weeks to learn our dictionary without speaking a word about it and come and atomize us. »
Nigel Richards is widely considered the best Scrabble player of all time. His track record is as long as it is impressive:
- English speaking world championships : 5 titles in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2018, 2019. Winner of the WESPA championship in 2019.
- National Championships : 5 times United States champion in 2008, 2010-2013; 8-time UK Open champion; 11-time Singapore Open champion.
- Other major titles : 15 victories at the King’s Cup in Thailand (the biggest tournament in the world).
- French-speaking championships: 2 classic world champion titles 2015, 2018, 3 titles in duo version, 6 other titles in various disciplines between 2015 and 2019.
- Spanish-speaking championship : World champion in duplicate formula in 2024.
Nigel Richards has a tournament win rate of around 75.59%, with 1,927 wins out of 2,549 games played.
“I’m hardly exaggerating when I say it’s an alien”
His knowledge and mastery of two new dictionaries – French and Spanish – have made him a real phenomenon –a detailed performance on the Dicopathe website-. “ There were rumors that he was starting to learn the Spanish-speaking dictionary which is even more demanding than the French-speaking one, with more dialects and therefore more words, more entries as they say. And when I saw that he was one of the participants in the Spanish-speaking world championship, obviously I followed him on Twitch. He played 24 matches against the best Spanish-speaking players in the world, and he won 23 of them! He therefore became world champion of Spanish-speaking Scrabble in the classic formula, that is to say in formula 1 against 1 – like you at home when you play against an opponent -. In the duplicate formula, which is the formula where everyone plays with the same letters in front of a computer, he is “only” second, I put “only” in big quotation marks », smiles Jean-Baptiste Morel.
“ If, for example, I started playing in Spanish, I would tend to play a word of two or three letters which is perhaps a French word, but not Nigel Richards who manages to make the distinction and restores the correct ones. words on the grid at the appropriate time. Because one thing is to know them, another is also to know how to place them on the grid. I’m barely exaggerating when I say it’s an alien. » warns Eric Salvador Tchouyo.
Have you crossed paths with him?
“ I met him once in France and also in Canada. Before he arrived here, we already had legends in French-speaking Scrabble, like the great champion, Antonin Michel, my friend. But when Nigel Richard sits down at a table, everyone loses their composure. Even the great champions! Because everyone realizes that we are going to fight simply to be second. Facing Nigel Richards is like playing against a computer. I enjoy watching players of a certain stature and every time I watch Nigel Richards it’s truly a spectacle. It has a particular look, quite original and you have the impression of being in a film… »
Nigel Richards was born in 1967 in New Zealand and discovered Scrabble late, at age 28. He now resides in Malaysia and has won approximately 76% of his competitive games since 1998. His style? An ability to find rare and complex words, strategic play that surpasses even the best software, exceptional calm, concentration and precision at the end of the game, where he plays optimally 99% of the time. Nigel Richards is recognized as the “GOAT” (Greatest Of All Time, Best ever) of Scrabble, dominating the game in a manner unmatched in the history of competitive gaming.
“Nigel Richards is a total enigma”
“ Really, it’s crazy, I don’t even understand how it’s possible. It’s true that in the Scrabble world, we have people with pretty full heads, who still have pretty strong memory skills. We are forced to learn a little by heart. We don’t know all the definitions of the words. And yet, there is not enough space in our heads and not enough time in our lives to fully know dictionaries. There are a few people who know them. And behind them, in addition, they would have to have the science of the game, the science of the grid to reach the level of Nigel who, in nine weeks, succeeded everything. I don’t see a comparable equivalent in any other sport » enthuses Jean-Baptiste Morel. There are over 400,000 words to remember in the Official Scrabble of Larousse !
Nigel Richards is a master of words, but is stingy with words. No interview, the legend is silent. His victory in the world of French-speaking Scrabble nevertheless earned him headlines, with a sketch of a portrait in the newspaper Libérationbut underlines Jean-Baptiste Morel: “ He does not speak to the press and has never wanted to respond to journalists. The enigma is such that there was still a lot of suspicion in the French-speaking Scrabble community, some said that it was not possible, there is an earpiece, there is something. This is so impossible to understand! Truly, I am faced with a total conundrum. »
Nigel would be a computer scientist and would control video surveillance cameras. Just two years after discovering the game, he turned professional. He spends his free time cycling and is said to have cycled 14 hours from Dunedin to Christchurch in New Zealand, braving the storm to reach his first tournament in 1998, which he won. He then set off pedaling in the other direction. In him, there is no show or pretension, but just a thirst for learning. He even says that he started to get bored playing in English, and that’s why he left to work on other languages.
“ I think there’s something like that with boredom. There is something quite fascinating about Nigel Richards, I have met him several times in tournaments. He comes by bike, we don’t really know where he’s staying, but he arrives with his helmet, his little bike. Very discreet, it nevertheless remains very easily affordable. The first tournament I played with him, he was putting away the tables and chairs at the end. He was the one who put everything away, even though he wasn’t local at all, he was in Lille. »
Can you make a living playing Scrabble?
“ Oh no, you don’t make a living playing Scrabble. That’s why it’s all the more fascinating. Nigel Richards has no financial interest in learning the French or Spanish dictionary. For the Spanish-speaking championship, if he won 3 or 4 thousand euros, I don’t have the exact bonuses, that’s the max. For the French-speaking tournament, it’s the same, he wins a check for 1,000 or 2,000 euros. You don’t play Scrabble to win money. »
In Scrabble there are of course the words, but above all there is the way of filling the grid. It’s strategic, we also play against the opponent in classic formula and it’s terribly mathematical in duplicate against a computer.
“ Grid science is the most important thing. You have to think about the place before finding the word. Know where we are going to place it so that it pays off and behind it, try to construct a word that fits well in that place. Generally, this is what separates a good player from an average player. Players who will look at their easel, try to form a word and then say, “Oh damn, it doesn’t fit” are thinking the wrong way. You must first look at the grid and determine where it will be most profitable. If you’re in a classic game against someone, you have to know how to play without opening up too much, without giving too many gifts to your opponent. And behind, we will look for the word. So this science of the grid, Nigel Richards necessarily has it. He knows how to mix words together. He knows that the most important thing to learn is two-letter words, then three-letter words. And this strategy, inevitably, helps from one language to another. »
A domination that nevertheless challenges and impresses
“ I must admit that every time there is a competition, when we arrive, the first question we ask ourselves is : will Nigel be there? Just hearing no, everyone is reassured, entrust Eric Salvador Tchouyo . We then know that the competition is open, everyone will have a chance. Nigel Richards is definitely out of the ordinary, he is even thought to have a form of autism, I really can’t say more, but that could perhaps explain this type of performance. »
Jean-Baptiste Morel explains: “ You know, autism, Asperger’s, we have a lot of them in the Scrabble world, but they don’t carry it with themselves. I have a friend who has Asperger’s syndrome and it manifests itself simply in the obsessions he has from time to time. For example, he told himself that today he was going to learn all the Greek gods. In the evening he knew all the Greek gods. Besides, apart from this slightly weird side from time to time of fixations, Asperger’s can be completely banal. They are completely ordinary people. So that could be the case for Nigel Richards. It would even seem quite plausible to me from the moment he is capable of becoming passionate about a dictionary, which also has absolutely no meaning for him. I don’t see how, otherwise, he could have such an obsession. »
There are almost 3,000 languages left in the world using the Latin alphabet, what will Nigel Richards’ next choice?