New Zealand man, Nigel Richards, won the French Scrabble championship, despite not being able to speak French. Instead he memorised the entire French dictionary. He still cannot speak French. Last month he won the Spanish-language World Championships.
Don’t even need to see a source, simply looking at him I believe everything said
Mate, share some of that kiwi memory around. Can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday
Weapons-grade autism
My uncle from New Zealand was very much like this man. He died doing what he loved, sitting at the table working on crosswords in the daily paper. Brilliant mind.
When someone tells me autism didn’t exist 30-60 years ago, I tell them it did. They just learned to adapt to their world. My uncle was a radio and word genius.
He probably couldn’t learn to speak the languages as well. He has a photographic memory and can learn every word he reads to repeat it in scrabble using the letters.Structuring it into a conversation is probably not his thing.
In Scrabble, if you think your opponent played a phoney word you can challenge it and if you’re right, the word has to be taken off and your opponent loses their turn. If you’re wrong you lose your turn.
In his French championship win, few of his opponents tried to play off phoney obscure words that looked French enough hoping he wouldn’t know it but my man challenged all of them off the board correctly.
Imagine telling a native speaker they’re wrong about their mother tongue when you don’t even speak it.
>**Richards possesses an eidetic, or photographic, memory that allows him to easily recall images of the dictionary’s pages**
[**https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/14/spanish-scrabble-champion-nigel-richards/**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/14/spanish-scrabble-champion-nigel-richards/)
This guy is a blast at parties; fiestas and fêtes, too.
Yep, that definitely looks like the beard and haircut of a guy who memorizes the dictionaries of languages he doesn’t speak.
That’s a boss level Reddit mod
Never judge people by their appea… never mind.
My autism means I dont like my hands getting dirty and am completely debilitated when my schedule is disrupted. Other people’s autism means they memorize several languages just for kicks
This man is human proof that the Turing test is not a valid test for cognition.
Bro took “beat them in their own game” too seriously 💀.
Seems like an interesting fellow.
hid extra tiles in his beard obvs
He didn’t learn the dictionary. He learned the scrabble guide book of authorized words which is still a feat of itself of course but it’s not the dictionary.
He is collecting scrabble championship like infinity stones
Your unemployed friend on a Tuesday:
Next week he’s going on a quest with a hobbit named Frodo
Scrabble isn’t really about knowing a lot of arcane and complicated words. The most important thing is knowing all of the two and three letter words and strategically using multipliers/preventing your opponent from doing so. There’s definitely a high degree of skill and memorization involved, but it wouldn’t require anything close to memorizing the whole french dictionary.
Autistic superpower?
I’m glad he ended up liking scrabble and not writing a manifesto in a cabin somewhere.
Chadgpt
Bet you that he’s from Hamilton… I mean, look at him.
Canadian French education goals.
“We’ll teach you how to write it but never speak it”
When not studying a foreign language dictionary, he is out absolutely crushin puss.
I think it will be easier for him to compete in English
Shot Nigel!
Aaron Spelling
It’s kind of like playing poker. Like cards in a deck, you need to know how many tiles are available and what combinations have the most value.
Except instead of memorizing a handful of combinations like flushes and full houses, he has to memorize 600,000.
And the Frech and Spanish townsfolk thought of him as a man of few words…
Why he look like that
How to say you’re autistic without saying you’re autistic.
Sir, you’re scaring me.
Will he explode if exposed to daylight?
So basically he could learn the languages too, but fuck it. What a legend!
I’ll be impressed when he memorizes the entire Chinese dictionary compendium and wins that contest.
/jk
Maybe he studied French so that he could refuse to speak it as opposed to just being unable to
C’est un grand malade
All the kids gonna be getting his hair cut now.
The prize money must be meager if that’s his haircut.
r/justfuckmyshitup
Hang on! I just read that he one the Spanish one!
Look at that fucking Rockstar.
Amazing.
Reminds me of that Albert Fish fella
Chad