World Scrabble Champion Wins Again
New Zealander Nigel Richards has won his fourth Scrabble World Championship, beating American Jesse Day in London in the 2018 final.
Scrabble is a board game that includes a board and 100 tiles. Each tile contains a letter of the alphabet, and each letter is worth a certain number of points. The goal is to spell words on the board using the tiles and earn the highest number of points.
Richards is the only person to have won the World Championship more than once. Since 1999 he has also won 37 tournaments in North America, the UK, Singapore, and Thailand.
Though he doesn't speak the language, Richards won the French World Scrabble Championship in 2015 after studying the French dictionary for nine weeks. He won again in 2018.
Richards started playing Scrabble at the age of 28. His mother told him that he wouldn’t do well at the game because he wasn’t good with words. Since then, Richards has won 75 percent of his tournament games and about $200,000 in prize money.
Howard Warner is President of the New Zealand Association of Scrabble Players. He knows Richards well and has played him many times. "He is a joy to play against. I’ve had a few wins against him, but overall he has a strong record against me, as he does against everyone."
What makes Nigel Richards so good? Warner says he's "like a computer... Nigel is unique. No one in the world can turn themselves into a Nigel."
