Athletes

Nigel Richards

Citation Formats

General Reference

Sport and Games Atlas. "Nigel Richards." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://sport.interactiveatlas.org/athletes/nigel-richards-scrabble.

APA Style

Sport and Games Atlas. (n.d.). Nigel Richards. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://sport.interactiveatlas.org/athletes/nigel-richards-scrabble

BibTeX

@misc{sportandgamesatlas-nigel-richards,
  author = {Sport and Games Atlas},
  title = {Nigel Richards},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://sport.interactiveatlas.org/athletes/nigel-richards-scrabble},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Nigel Richards is a New Zealand Scrabble player widely regarded as the greatest competitor in the game's history, having won the World Scrabble Championship five times and, remarkably, the French-language World Scrabble Championship twice despite not speaking French, after memorising the French dictionary for the competition.

Facts

Birth Year

1967 1

Nationality

New Zealand 1

Career Highlight

Won the World Scrabble Championship in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2018 and 2019, and the French-language World Scrabble Championship in 2015 and 2018, the latter two despite not speaking French. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Competed In

World Scrabble Championship

Five-time English-language champion (2007, 2011, 2013, 2018, 2019).

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Plays

Scrabble

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source

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