A New Zealander studied for a year to win the Spanish world Scrabble title. He doesn’t speak Spanish

Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title. Nigel Richards is a professional player and won the Spanish world Scrabble championships in November, losing one game out of 24. He started memorizing the language’s Scrabble word list a year ago. In 2015, he won the world French-language Scrabble title despite not speaking French. He has been the English-language world champion five times. He doesn’t speak to the media, and a friend says that “he doesn’t understand what all the hoo-ha is about.”