Dude Who Can’t Speak Spanish Wins Spanish Scrabble World Championship

I feel like I could do a pretty decent job in a Scrabble tournament. I don't play it much because I've got too much cool guy stuff to do, but I think I could still hold my own, what with the fact that my job has quite a bit to do with words, and words are kind of a big part of Scrabble.

But if I tried to play Scrabble in another language that I don't speak — which would be any language that isn't English — I'd be screwed.

Well, that wasn't the case for pro Scrabble player Nigel Richards. The New Zealander has five world titles in English, but I guess his native tongue was becoming old hat.

So, he decided to try playing the game en Español, a language he doesn't speak, but he did study it for a year ahead of time.

And guess what, according to the Associated Press, he won the whole thing and is now the Spanish Scrabbler of the World (or el Mundo, as they say en Espańol).

Scrabble fiend Nigel Richards won the Spanish Scrabble world championship, despite not even speaking the language. (MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE / USA TODAY NETWORK and Getty Images)

According to Richards' friend, Liz Fagerllund — a Scrabble official, if you can believe that — he won all but one of his 24 games at the tournament in Granada, Spain by memorizing the game's official word list.

"He can’t understand why other people can’t just do the same thing," Fagerlund explained. "He can look at a block of words together, and once they go into his brain as a picture he can just recall that very easily."

I mean, I studied Spanish for four years in high school and a semester in college and I know a shamefully small amount of the language. If you need someone to order a beer or ask where the library is ("Donde esta la biblioteca?") I'm your man, but if you need someone to win a Spanish tournament, don't look at me.

You may as well give a chimpanzee some tiles and hope for the best.

So, congratulations to Nigel Richards on one impressive accomplishment.

Or as they say in Spanish, Felicidades… alright, I had to look that one up.