For Defector, Stefan Fatsis introduces us to Nigel Richards, GOAT of Scrabble, a man who can trounce you in English and French. Even though Richards doesn’t speak French, he’s said to have “inhaled some large chunk of the 386,000 words on the Francophone list” to win the French world championship in 2015.
At a time when artificial intelligence has assumed overlord status in the popular imagination, Nigel is a reminder of the unknown limits of human performance and the mysteries of the human mind. His feats of raw memory, linguistic magic, and strategic perspicacity—turning REALISM into HYPERREALISM and WITNESS into EARWITNESS; outfoxing opponents to steal seemingly hopeless games with intricate, multi-turn setups—are recounted among Scrabblers with awe and wonder.
Meanings don’t matter in Scrabble. Competitive players care only whether letters arranged in a particular order are acceptable in whatever lexicon governs play. The dictionary is a rulebook. Learn more rules, score more points, win more games.
Scrabble is about pattern recognition; players use anagramming websites and software like Aerolith and Zyzzyva to study and memorize thousands of letter strings.
… if Nigel has indeed memorized every acceptable word, that means he knows more than twice as many words as his rivals, and anyone else in the 40-plus years since Scrabble contested its first championship.
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