New Zealander Nigel Richards racks up remarkable victory after reportedly memorising francophone Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks...

The French Scrabble federation described Richards’ victory as a first in a tweet after the final. French journalist Jean-Baptiste Morel, a self-confessed Scrabble fan, writing in the NouvelObs, said Richards’ qualification for the competition had seemed “an amusing attraction on paper”.

“He doesn’t speak French, but he learned to play in our language by reading the words of the ODS (Official Scrabble book) as if it was just a sequence of letters to learn. The man, as well as having a perfect command of the vocabulary, possesses an impressive game tactic that allows him to leapfrog the competition,” Morel wrote.

Morel said, in the final, Richards had a “pretty rotten” draw of letters. However, he overwhelmed the opposition with “ridiculous ease”. “He has learned no language logic, just a succession of letter sequences giving rise to words. In his head it’s binary: what draw (of letters) can make a scrabble, what draw can’t”.

Morel says Richards will take part in another championship on Wednesday in which the players compete against a computer. “He is an outsider – it’s the first time he’s played using this method – but something tells us that he’s hasn’t finished with the surprises,” he wrote.

Kung-fu Hillbilly wrote:Secre fuckun bleu, cuz.

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote:What was the cash prize? Some people are just wired for that kind of stuff. Probably just used mnemonics or something.