Simply amazing….Here is what I call awesome genius! The new winner for the world French language Scrabble championship can barely speak French. How did this happen?
The story is about Nigel Richards, a New Zealander who lives in Malaysia and can barely speak a “mot” of French, The Independent reported. He learned, in the space of nine weeks, the French dictionary and, vitally, all the hundreds of conjugations of French verbs, both regular and irregular.
In Louvain, Belgium on Monday night at the world French language Scrabble final, Mr Richards, 46, defeated Schélick Ilagou Rekawe of Gabon by two games to one. He had previously won the English language world Scrabble crown three times.
“He is not a French speaker. I swear it,” said Yves Brenez, vice president of the Belgian Scrabble Federation. “If you speak to him he can only say ‘bonjour’, with an accent. He can give the scores in French, because the rules demand it, but that’s it.”
Mr Richards, who has a photographic memory, studied a French dictionary and grammar book for nine weeks to prepare for this week’s Francophone championship.
“He is a Scrabble war machine,” said Mr Brenez. “To him words are just combinations of letters.”
Source: The Independent
