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A comment on Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not speaking Spanish. Parent comment

Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by tshaddox on Thursday December 12, 2024 @07:46PM (#42404951)
Eh, I bet he’s using some normal Latin vocabulary and orthography skills too. I suspect he wouldn’t do quite at well memorizing a truly random set of combinations of 26 symbols.
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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by zeroonetwothree on Thursday December 12, 2024 @08:39PM (#42405238)
Right it’s not random that it was French, and not, say, Russian.
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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by dmurray on Friday December 13, 2024 @02:33AM (#42406638)
You say that, but there are some world-class Scrabble players from Thailand who play Scrabble in English, a language with a completely different alphabet and orthography from their native tongue. They don't necessarily speak English well, either. One beat Nigel Richards for the World Championship in 2009 [0].

I think it would take Richards about 20 minutes to learn the Cyrillic alphabet and a few weeks to get familiar enough with the patterns of Russian to be a competitive player in that language. World champion is obviously a harder ask, but I wouldn't rule it out.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakorn_Nemitrmansuk

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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by borski on Friday December 13, 2024 @10:05AM (#42409054)
Sounds like his next challenge.
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