The French Scrabble Champ Does Not Speak French

HughPickens.com writes: On July 20, Nigel Richards won the French-language world Scrabble championship. Richards does not speak a word of French. "He doesn't speak French at all, he just learnt the words," says Liz Fagerlund. "He won't know what they mean, wouldn't be able to carry out a conversation in French I wouldn't think." Richards reportedly memorized an entire French dictionary in the two months leading up to the competition. For living-room players, Scrabble is a test of vocabularies but for world-class players, it's about cold memorization and mathematical probabilities which is why top player are often computer programmers or mathematicians, not poets or novelists. Think of the dictionary as a giant rulebook of valid text strings not as a compendium of the beauty and complexity of the English language. A good competitive player will have memorized a sizeable chunk of the 83,667 words that are two letters to eight letters long. Great players will know a lot of the 29,150 nine-letter words as well.

To the uninitiated, a scrabble game played by top players looks like they had played in Martian. Here's a taste: In a single game in last year's Nationals, Richards played the following words: zarf (a metal holder for a coffee cup), waddy (to strike with a thick club), hulloed (to hallo, to shout), sajous (a capuchin, a monkey), qi (the vital force in Chinese thought), flyboats (a small, fast boat), trigo (wheat) and threaper (one that threaps, disputes). Richards has a photographic memory and is known for his uncanny gift for constructing impossible words by stringing his letters through tiles already on the board. "He is probably the best Scrabble player in the world at this point," says John D. Williams, Jr.. "He's got the entire dictionary memorized. He's pretty much a Scrabble machine, if such a thing exists." So, really, how does he do it? As Richards said in an interview posted on YouTube, "I'm not sure there is a secret. It's just a matter of learning the words." All 178,691 of them.

Comments

Words + Attitude = Wins

[drjoe1e6]

It's not just his uncanny command of the dictionary (or dictionaries!) that makes Nigel a champion. He has an incredibly calm demeanor across the board. He is unflappable, regardless of tile draws or opponent's plays. The ability to focus on the next play and the strategic situation, without distraction, is critical to winning in a long tournament.

Re:Is this a surprise?

[AchilleTalon]

Not knowing the meaning and not knowing the vocabulary in a normal way, obviously give him an advantage. We can understand it this way, if you don't know the language, the word which will come to your mind will come to it only because the reminding process is initiated by the set of letters you have on your tray. On another hand, the native speaker of the language will be reminded words on another basis. Yes, the letters on the tray will have a role, however, he will naturally screen words and extract a subset of words he uses or is likely to use, which will probably will elimitate a lot of good candidates.

New rule

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, we've got a programmer in our group that we played with one night. After his second questionable 2 letter word we added a rule (democratically voted on and adopted) that you must be able to define your word and use it properly in a sentence if anyone asks.

Re:New rule

[Overzeetop]

Defined on the spot. If you don't know what the word means, or how to use it properly, it doesn't count. It means you have to play what you know, not just a memorized list.

Re: Is this a surprise?

[ebh]

That's the trap of thinking of Scrabble as a word game. It's not. It's a maths and probability game, with words as the playing pieces.