Photo via Flickr user John Morgan
Read: Is Going Mobile the Future of Board Games?Yesterday a bearded guy from New Zealand named Nigel Richards won the French Scrabble World Championship without speaking a single word of the language.Richards is somewhat of a Scrabble legend, and has already snagged thousands of dollars in cash prizes at competitions across the globe. After decades of winning English Scrabble championships, Richards wanted to give himself a bit of a challenge. About eight weeks ago, he picked up a French dictionary and signed on to compete in the French Scrabble Championship without any working knowledge of the language, according to an interview with Richards's close friend in the New Zealand Herald."He doesn't speak French at all, he just learnt the words," she said. "He won't know what they mean, wouldn't be able to carry out a conversation in French I wouldn't think."Richards beat his rival—a guy from the French-speaking country Gabon who, embarrassingly, actually speaks French—in Belgium.Shirley Hol, president of the Scrabble club in Richards' hometown of Christchurch, told the Herald the French were "gobsmacked" by Richards's win, a word Richards probably used once or twice in his countless English-language Scrabble games."I think one of the comments was, 'Are you extra-terrestrial or something?' Because it was so amazing," she said. "…Initially he was just average, but he grew very quickly—obviously had a flair for words."