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

Is this a surprise?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Scrabble is only a game about words at fairly low levels of play. If you have two otherwise unprepared people stuck in a room with nothing but scrabble for amusement, yes, the one with the better vocabulary likely has better options. Outside of the amateurs, though, memorization of the approved dictionary(starting with words chosen for good point values, the ability to dispose of letters that are usually tricky to get rid of, and other helpful features; but ideally progressing to all of them) supplants knowledge of the language and the remaining challenge is board control and optimizing the conversion of tiles into points over the course of the game.

There would certainly be additional prep time, even for the unusual characters who are really good at this; but the skills that the game demands for high level play should be transferable to any language(or even a nonsense dictionary) that works reasonably well with representation by a relatively small alphabet.

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.

Re:Is this a surprise?

[ebh]

Those of us who play tournament Scrabble are only mildly surprised that Nigel learned all the words in that short a period of time. But what makes Nigel the best is much more than knowing all the words. There are a few dozen players, and a number of computer players, who can credibly make that claim.

Nobody has Nigel's combination of word knowledge, board vision, and ability to calculate probabilities.

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.

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.

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:New rule

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

That's fine but that's not Scrabble. There is no requirement to know what word easy, just that it is a valid word. We occasionally had tournaments in college and I'd play for fun; wasn't any good but it was fun anyway. the best part was when someone looked at word and got ready to challenge it was to use it in a sentence but improperly so they'd think it wasn't a real word and lose a challenge. The mind games were as much fun as the tiles on the board.

Re:New rule

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"Democratically" implemented, i.e. a rule change after the game had begun. He should have balked.

That's complete bull-cromulence! >:-(

Re:New rule

[Malc]

Some of my family members tried that on me once. The trouble was, having been uncomfortable previously not knowing the meaning of the words, I'd already memorised a bunch of them. They then tried to change the rules again that the words had to come from a tiny dictionary! The compromise was for me to write down the list and allow them to refer to it.

Even the SOWPOD list of 2 letter words isn't too long and thus the meanings are easy enough to learn. I like it more than the restricted American vocabulary of the TWL list because it gives one much more freedom of play.

Re:New rule

[FunkSoulBrother]

I play (intermediate level) competitive scrabble and this is how my wife and friends handicap me if we want to play at home. Frankly I don't mind it -- as a mere mortal without Nigel's photographic memory, it helps me a lot to keep the funky words memorized if I actually learn what they mean. Plus, learning that something is a noun vs a verb makes it a lot easier to infer if you can stick an S or ING or whatever on it.

However, I've found that people still passive aggressively rage when you're beating them by 200 points and explain that AA is a type of lava or that ZA is just shitty slang for pizza that no one actually uses, so it is an imperfect solution....

Re:Hobby vs Professional

[ebh]

if you want to be a professional game/sport player, Scrabble is not the way to go. One year, the top prize at the US National Scrabble Championship, attended by about 700 players, was $25,000, the highest it ever was. Someone pointed out that year that $50,000 was the top prize of the national championship of Tiddlywinks.

Breaking News!

[Anonymous Coward]

France passes emergency cultural laws?
1. Require all scrabble players to speak Fluent French!
2. Drug testing all scrabble players for ketchup and other banned un-french substances.
3. Require all scrabble players to carry a baguette in their pocket at all times.

Re:Breaking News!

[ciaran2014]

And it's Scrablé, if you don't mind.

Re:He "learnt" the words

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not dialect. It's a person making a grammatical mistake and other people mindlessly repeating it.

That word "grammar" doesn't mean what you think it does.

Re: Seriously?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

An article for slashdotters will usually explain what fucking is.

Reminds me of a lot of religious jerks I know

[Opportunist]

Know that Book by heart to the letter and don't have the foggiest idea what it's supposed to tell them...

Re:He "learnt" the words

[FunkSoulBrother]

Tournament Scrabble player here (much worse than Nigel, lol): LEARNT is a valid scrabble word string.

The French Scrabble Champ Does Not Speak French

[hcs_$reboot]

Neither do the French. French is a difficult and obsolete language made of gendered nouns and unusable grammar. It used to be spoken by some remaining native French people up to the end of the XXth century (date of the American TV series landings).

Re:What's French for

[oldmac31310]

whoosh