Nigel Richards (Scrabble player)
In 2015, despite not speaking French, Richards won the French World Scrabble Championships, after reportedly spending nine weeks studying the French dictionary. He won it again in 2018, and multiple duplicate titles from 2016.
Some tweets
He is understood to have mastered the French scrabble dictionary or roughly 400,000 words in nine weeks' time. He also holds a record peak rating (akin to Elo ratings in Chess) of 2298. Richards' peers will tell you that he's unrivaled in word knowledge and quick calculation of mathematical probabilities on the board.
Nigel Richards is a New Zealand–Malaysian Scrabble player who is widely regarded as the greatest tournament-Scrabble player of all time. Born and raised in New Zealand, Richards became World Champion in 2007, and repeated the feat in 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019.
The article massively understates how skilled Nigel is. He doesn't just know the words, he consistently plays the move that scores the highest-possible points while denying counterplay from his opponent. He's leagues better than any other Scrabble player and it isn't a contest... he's literally better at Scrabble than computers are.