Nigel Richards was born and raised in New Zealand. He was
awarded a university scholarship, but chose not to attend. Instead, he moved to
Malaysia. Nigel started playing Scrabble in high school. He became a world
Scrabble champion in 2007, an accomplishment he repeated in 2011, 2013, 2018,
and 2019. He was (and still is) the first-ever English Scrabble player to win
the world title more than once. In 2015, after spending nine weeks memorizing
the French Scrabble dictionary (roughly 400,000 words) Nigel won the French
World Scrabble Championship. He won it again in 2016 and 2018. In 2024, Nigel accomplished a similar feat by mastering the Spanish Scrabble
dictionary and winning the Spanish-language World Championships. Nigel speaks neither
Spanish nor French. I always assumed winning at Scrabble was a reflection of language
skill. While it definitely involves expertise with words, mastery is also
mathematic – requiring strategic tile placement and point scoring.
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