Spanish pride has been dented after a New Zealander who cannot speak the language won Spain’s Scrabble world championship.

The victory of Nigel Richards at the competition in Granada has been greeted with indignation.

“This is an unbelievable humiliation,” fumed the broadcaster Cadena Ser, saying that it had failed to interview Richards “because there was no way to do so as he doesn’t speak Spanish”. El Confidencial said the Kiwi’s success was the “height of absurdity”.

Known as the Tiger Woods of Scrabble, Richards, 57, “demonstrated an exceptional ability to recall Spanish words”, it was claimed, to beat more than 150 competitors representing 20 countries.

“This is someone with very particular, incredible abilities; he’s a gifted guy,” Benjamín Olaizola, who came second, told Cadena Ser. “We are talking about a New Zealander who has won multiple championships in English — at least five of them.”

“He played the word ‘trinidad’ and then ‘cotejáis’, with which he broke my schemes,” Olaizola added. The broadcaster commented that although he “probably doesn’t know the meaning of those words, Richards took advantage of the fact that they could be used in a scenario that … would eventually prove key to his ultimate victory and the coveted world championship”.

The Greek Eva Tsalapati also did well but the laurels went to Richards, who won the title with three games to spare and continued his 21-game unbeaten streak.

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The New Zealand Association of Scrabble said the country had “historically done very well in international tournaments”, especially considering its small population base.

Originally from Christchurch, Richards, who lives in Malaysia, won five world championship titles between 2007 and 2019. He won the French-language Scrabble championship in 2015 and 2018, also without speaking the language. For his first French trophy, he reportedly memorised the French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks.

Among specialists, he is described as the best Scrabble player in history. Richards, who has been referred to as a recluse, did not start playing until he was 28.

“When he learnt to talk, he wasn’t interested in words, just numbers,” his mother, Adrienne Fischer, who taught him the game, once said. “I said: ‘I know a game you’re not going to be very good at because you can’t spell very well and you weren’t good at English at school.’”