Nigel Richards' Most Godlike Move

Welcome to Episode 21 of Scrabble History, a series where I break down some of the most incredible plays, epic rivalries, and amazing moments in Scrabble's rich competitive history.
Regular viewers of this channel already know all about Scrabble GOAT Nigel Richards. But in case you needed another reminder of his incredible abilities, he gave us a moment to remember at the KSSA Indian Open in January 2024. In his round 3 game with Rajiv Antao, he made a move that nobody else in the world would find, reminding us that he truly is in a class by himself.
Sometime soon, I plan to resume streaming on my Twitch channel:
/ wanderer15
I also have a weekly show on the official Scrabble Twitch channel (Tuesdays 3-5 PM ET):
/ scrabble
Play Scrabble at playscrabble.com!

[@ThreeEyedFish]

Will, this is the 7th week in a row you've shown Nigel Richards' most godlike move

[@kingpin6173]

He has many of them

[@javen9693]

Why do you think they call making a good move "Niging around super Nige style"

[@Pinkmanbutawesome]

THATS WHY HES YHE GOAT THE GOAUT

[@petrie911]

When you're a god that's just how it is.

[@doughyjoey_8742]

Does anyone know where i can study words that only end in the letter "S" Otherwise known as a Sticky S. For example, "Kans" is valid. But "kan" is not. Tried Google, but that didn't help. I need a scrabble expert! Plz 🙏 😊

[@timvvs]

Dropping Pernoctated and getting +5 for a failed challenge is the equivalent of dunking over someones face and then getting the And 1 free throw...

[@Annihilator_5024]

its the equivalent of doing a one hand no looking full court shot

[@Benjy52]

+5 is barely even a punishment.

[@SpencerTwiddy]

@@Annihilator_5024…and then getting a free throw😂

[@davidf2244]

​@@Annihilator_5024you're bad at metaphors and you should feel bad. Like a toaster on Christmas.

[@Annihilator_5024]

@@davidf2244 L troll

[@whitesoxMLB]

@3:43 "Nigel does have one playable bingo here." I like how the video never even mentions that Nigel found that bingo. It's just assumed.

[@Benjy52]

Yeah, that’s a problem in this video. Should have been shown on the screen.

[@megapussi]

@@Benjy52 huh? Bro its literally the next word in the sentence; Eruption.

[@TheOfficialBlackHole]

@@Benjy52it was though. Nigel’s point counter flashes green and shows the amount of points he increases by. Besides, it wasn’t a very big deal because pro scrabble players find bingos all the time, not just Nigel.

[@DueySR]

@@Benjy52 It was shown immediately after. E(R)UPTION was the playable bingo, which he played.

[@hridaysamtani5797]

Before this game, I was looking forward to playing Nigel in that event. After his insane 11-letter find, that enthusiasm quickly evaporated. Sadly, I did get to play him eventually, a game I lost by 90-odd points. The GOAT for a reason! 🙌

[@AlexDings]

I think mentioning a 90-point loss to Nigel counts as a humblebrag 🙂

[@hridaysamtani5797]

Lol, I'm only proud of the fact that I got to play him, which is a massive privilege for any Scrabble player :)

[@phroney]

Always count yourself lucky for playing the GOAT!

[@coolguy14006]

Amazing that you got to play the GOAT!

[@thegodofpez]

Props to Rajiv for not flipping the table over.

[@ohtani2024]

he should've at least blocked that L lane....

[@henryt9281]

@@ohtani2024 If Rajiv blocked the L, he might have won this game.

[@qingkunli9235]

Nigel had set up near a triple on the other end of the board - he would be locking himself out of opportunity to get points back the next turn. Nigel having the tiles to play in that spot himself was chance.

[@joe_z]

2:19 "Man this rack EFIN SUX!"

[@BigAsciiHappyStar]

😁😁😁😁😁😁

[@vitex198]

Definitely not in this case lmao

[@johnwilder4789]

The most impressive thing about that 11-letter find, as Will mentioned, is that he even thought to look in that “lane” to begin with, considering the other excellent bingos he had available. Amazing.

[@NONO-hz4vo]

That and it was a Collins only word.

[@TheGuyCalledX]

​@@NONO-hz4vowhat's incredible is if you look up the word, the two most recent mentions before he played it are from the 1800s, and Boris Johnson describing pernoctating on the plane.

[@AlexDings]

Let's give his opponent some credit - the recap wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for him publishing the game protocol. People probably don't realize that most tournament games aren't recorded for posterity. Just to reiterate how crazy the word is, the same is true for it as was for CHLORODYNE: playability lists, which include several hundreds of thousands of words ranked by their frequency in engine autoplay, don't even include the word at all because it literally never showed up in the millions of self-play games.

[@evanyurko3640]

That’s just disgusting holy crap. I’m glad to see Nigel finally playing in tournaments again :)

[@Heamer3222]

My jaw dropped with the triple-triple "influxes," but when Nigel played "pernoctated," my jaw hit the floor, detached from my head, and burrowed six feet underground.

[@SpencerTwiddy]

In that order😂

[@joshuasims5421]

You know, I’m starting to suspect Nigel knows all the 16 letter words too.

[@Zebra_M]

Just in case!

[@leonhard6327]

Just in case he goes to Germany, where the words are so long you put boards next to board next to boards, so you kann spell: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

[@kmdewhurst]

Get you someone who loves you like Will Anderson loves Nigel Richards.

[@Dorumin]

Pernoctate is a common verb in Spanish, modern use for hotels and such. Very impressive showing

[@Gorvinhagen]

6:45 the fact that this assumption must be made seriously is simply bonkers. Nigel is such a threat.

[@qqw743]

Your graphics are fire. Letters floating around before forming into a word and so on. Must be a lot, or at least some work. It's cool, keep it up.

[@CHAZZRMAN]

i have literally never played scrabble why is this such a good video to me?

[@ZahraIsMyDog]

Watching greatness explained by one of the best in the world is always great to see.

[@Imaginationless916]

Happy theres a new "Nigel in deep thought" pic for 2024.

[@yiliu1497]

Hey mate, huge fan of your content. (I don’t play Scrabble but love following your analyses) Also your sense of humour is on point :) Best wishes!

[@wanderer15]

Thank you very much!

[@elephantseal5679]

I see Nigel I click

[@EltWilder]

We are simple humans.

[@bsrecipe4860]

Ok

[@EDoyl]

I just think it's great that there's a game out there which has a *truly* uncontested GOAT.

[@WipZedKay]

After watching so many Scrabble videos from you, I have made the realisation that bingo is not a bingo in Scrabble and that makes me quite sad.

[@whitesoxMLB]

But bingoes are bingoes.

[@wanderer15]

It's weird that we even use that term. In fact, in the UK, they're called bonuses, which makes much more sense.

[@bubbagarland]

I'm in the UK - I call them bingoes @:@@@wanderer15

[@ryleypalmer]

@@wanderer15wait so you guys don’t shout bingo when you play scrabble?

[@kyrawr83]

Gotta start spelling it bingeaux

[@gmaasry]

I wonder whether just for completeness' sake Nigel also knows all the 16+ length words, despite the fact that they won't fit on the Scrabble board at all.

[@AlexDings]

You say that now, but just wait for Will's next recap where Nigel somehow manages to play a 16-letter word

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563]

​@@AlexDings "And that's when Nigel played Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, pulverizing the board on the spot."

[@jkattack2640]

He's prepping for scrabble 2, when they introduce the board extension power up that lets you create a 3x3 extension to the board

[@ZahraIsMyDog]

I’m almost willing to bet the other recorded 11 letter plays were all something like easier to find compound nouns. This has to be one of the greatest plays ever.

[@matthewoconnor3362]

The ones I know are ELECTRI(CITY) and INTERVI(EWER) but there was also ASTROBI(OLOGY) a 12

[@joebobsouth]

Hey, I remember that last one 😀

[@wanderer15]

It's been on my to-do list for a while to make a video covering some of these other moves!

[@ValkyRiver]

@@wanderer15 If you really wanna get an 11-letter word down, play DEMO and get one of these racks: • ABELNTU (for DEMOUNTABLE) • ACCEIRS (for DEMOCRACIES) • ACEIRST (for DEMOCRATISE) • ACGHIPR (for DEMOGRAPHIC) • ACILLNY (for DEMONICALLY) • ADEILRS (for DEMORALISED) • ADEITTV (for DEMOTIVATED) • AEGHPRR (for DEMOGRAPHER) • AEILRSS (for DEMORALISES) • AEISTTV (for DEMOTIVATES) • AENRSTT (for DEMONSTRATE) • BDEIILS (for DEMOBILISED) • BEIILSS (for DEMOBILISES) • DEIINST (for DEMONITISED) • EIINSST (for DEMONITISES) • EHILRSS (for DEMOLISHERS) • GHIILNS (for DEMOLISHING) • IILNOST (for DEMOLITIONS) (Any tile can be replaced with a blank tile)

[@vitex198]

Holy shit add PERNOCTATED to the goat moves list like damn 😂

[@zacharyjeffares8158]

You just gotta love that humility: NO MERCY - because this obscure combination is the best logical play and is both dumbfounding and uniquely humorous.

[@serverinvihatuin2654]

not going to lie that is freaking insane

[@brycepowell6639]

I could watch Nigel Richard videos by you for the rest of my life. The amount of passion I get for an eleven letter word is ridiculous

[@tim..indeed]

Would love to see other examples of 11-letter bingos being played, maybe even longer ones! These extremes always fascinate the most.

[@BramCohen]

The frequency of 11 letter words in tournament play understates their significance because the players don't know them. A better indicator is how often they happen in computer vs computer play. For what it's worth my wild guess is they're something like ten times as common there, which still is hardly anything.

[@wanderer15]

Yes, this is true. The answer I got on this point is one 11 letter bingo in every 6,500 AI vs AI games. Keep in mind that there’s another factor - some of the instances of humans playing 11s are the result of multiple turns worth of fishing/attempting to draw a particular play, which computers do not typically do, driving their rate of playing 11s down slightly despite their flawless word-finding ability.

[@BramCohen]

@@wanderer15 Is that because computer lookahead doesn't go that far or because they assume their opponent is also a computer and will successfully block such craziness?

[@wanderer15]

Lookahead does go far enough to detect possibilities like this, but many large AI vs AI datasets are generated by much faster play selection algorithms than the more rigorous techniques available, just to increase the total number of games in the set. I would agree though that a slower-paced, deeper-lookahead series of games would feature a lot more blocks of these plays by the all-seeing computer than a human being, who would have to be extremely clever to detect such a non-traditional threat.

[@ethangerrard8026]

Nigel Richard’s should be a national treasure here in NZ! It’s a real shame he gets no recognition here :(

[@jamisonr]

That was awesome. I keep thinking there must be an end to the amazement, yet here we are

[@petrjara7559]

The fact that only 5 of 46k games had 11 letter word played doesn't mean there are not 10k more of them where one such word could be played but wasn't since nobody learns them or just didn't spot the possibility.

[@wanderer15]

That's true. In large data sets of AI vs AI games, eleven letter bingos are seen once in about every 6,500 games. Keep in mind that human players will often spot the possibility of a bingo of this type and repeatedly fish for it / actively try to manifest it, which computer players are unlikely to do, so that balances things out a bit.

[@Cloiss_]

In a sample size of 10 million games of two high level scrabble AIs playing each other, an 11+ letter word was played once every 5200 games. A bit more common than the one in 9000 on Crosstables, but still incredibly rare!

[@peterfranklinrouth895]

@@wanderer15 I had a game on Scrabble Go where my opponent played STAnDING on the bottom row from under the first TW square. I fished by playing a single letter, keeping DELNU?, and next move played UNDERSTAnDINGLy for 204 points :D

[@petrjara7559]

@@Cloiss_ Then another question is if AI plays it like the most optimal move, how many times it appeared as the second, third, ... best and just wasn't played because of that. Most of such words are probably in the middle of the board and therefore ordinary bingos hitting TW at the edge will score better.

[@domino14]

I played an 11-letter bingo (MISTREATING to the triple, from MIST) at the 2007 Players Championship, but it's not on cross-tables! I have no idea where that game is now. :(

[@HeavyMetalMouse]

I feel like, when it comes to word-games in general, one of the best ways to be comfortable enough with large awkward words to spot them in a game context is to have hobbies that put you contact with unusual words on a regular basis. If you happen to enjoy reading a lot of fantasy fiction, you might encounter a variety of obscure older words, while an interest in science-fiction literature would expose you to various technical jargon that is outside the normal experience. Just about any field of interest, be they among the arts or sciences, has its own sort of dialect in which unusually flowery words pop up and which the discipline asks you to be comfortable with. I myself have drawn more than a couple plays at the casual Scrabble board from things that show up in tabletop roleplaying games or collectable card games (the latter of which often have to reach deep into the thesaurus for things like 'yet another word that means it sets you on fire' :P). Things stick in your head much better when you have experiences and stories to attach them to.

[@wanderer15]

Great points. It's kind of a litmus test, too - does exposure to those more obscure words unique to particular fields of study annoy you, or intrigue you? If the latter, Scrabble might be for you.

[@hadinossanosam4459]

That's basically how my word knowledge works (lots of obscure or technical hobbies/interests), but I also find it's actually surprisingly common for jargon words to be invalid! I can't actually recall any practical examples (I mostly play online, so invalid words are immediately rejected and don't stick in my mind), but some searching resulted in e.g. "endian" (computing, "big/little endian"), "triax" and "servoed" (electronics, "servo" is only listed as a noun), "jiggler" and "overlift" (lockpicking, "overlift attack"), "chossy" (climbing), "oktavist" and "attacca" (music), "overbar" (typography) and "poset" (math), none of which are in any English Scrabble dictionary as far as I can tell. And these ones I expected might not be listed, the annoying ones are usually the ones I don't even expect to be obscure - I find it surprisingly hard to tell how commonly jargon is actually used

[@doctorleftwizard8931]

That is just amazing. Thank you for the video as always, Will! :)

[@LivingRacoon]

Great video! Not someone who plays scrabble but I've found your videos so entertaining I might give it a try. I do have a suggestion though: do you think you could make a video about the AI people use for Scrabble predictions, how it stacks up and compares to human players, what limitations it has (if any), and how it compares to things like Stockfish for chess? Thanks!

[@wanderer15]

This is a great suggestion for a topic. (And thank you)

[@degenerate82]

Another great video that illustrates how awesome Scrabble is.

[@sophiegrey9576]

At what point do these moves stop being godlike and start being nigel-richards-like?

[@eraflowski]

"Until proven otherwise, we have to assume that Nigel knows every word in the dictionary, regardless of length" This is the hardest sentence known to man

[@BC-wj8fx]

7:30 "five consecutive bingos in a row" as if there's any other way to do five consecutive bingos.

[@OfficialGidfather]

11s are nuts

[@vendredi5]

Zowee! It truly is amazing to see such brillliance -- and your narration, Will, is - as always - exquisite!

[@lillyrose6568]

I love everything about your videos. The graphics and commentary are top quality. Fingers crossed you can pass 100K subs this year!

[@wanderer15]

Thank you! I’m just looking to stay consistent and release something new that I’m proud of each week.

[@wonkywombat12]

what an insane game also as an aside, I just wanted to say that I've literally never played a game of scrabble but your videos are still extremely interesting to watch, which honestly is quite a feat when it comes to this style of game. you do a great job of making something that is pretty dense/obtuse very clear and explaining what makes the things interesting

[@wanderer15]

Really appreciate this, thank you!

[@Kitcomedy]

his memory must be photographic, otherwise it really would be insane to learn 20,000+ words just to score 3 extra points in one game of scrabble

[@sebastianbardon391]

Do you know if he speaks other languages? "Pernoctar" is relatively common in Spanish.

[@aidench3.14]

@@sebastianbardon391I’m guessing probably not, or at least I’ve never seen anything regarding this. He did famously win the French tournament without speaking any French !

[@sebastianbardon391]

@@aidench3.14 Wow, I thought it was clickbait! I will investigate this guy further. Thanks!

[@imilal4249]

im spanish and ''pernoctar'' isn't that stange of a word and I only played scrabble like twice so maybe thats how he knows it

[@JONNYTUBSTER]

Mighas try to drop a cheeky Pernoctated whilst playing scrabble with me dad for the next week or so

[@wanderer15]

Good luck! :)

[@JONNYTUBSTER]

@@wanderer15 I hooked lute under Slayed, close enough ay !

[@johnnybegood9742]

Just a great job, so thorough and the graphics are spot on.

[@Trizzer89]

God I love Nigel plays

[@pjkrill3109]

6:53 Dude I cant even dream of those feats Nigel is beyond me

[@astroblaze_z779]

hi, i love your content! itd be cool if you can made a video about the longest scrabble words played (like 15 letters or smthn) that would be cool to see, anyway good video!

[@ExplosiveBrohoof]

Man, I would've loved to see a live recording of this game. The reaction from the commentators would have been lovely.

[@pideperdonus2]

Nigel Richard brain is full of amazing words. Such memory!

[@terracottapie]

2:18 Hey Will, did you arrange the tiles to say "EFIN SUX" as an Easter egg? Or was it just alphabetical? If choice (a), high-five.

[@joeedley3936]

Great video, Will! We need more of these! keelp em coming! Love it!

[@dwaterson21]

Bro if I were Rajiv would have flipped the board. Absolutely diabolical game.

[@arthurmoy8154]

I don't play scrabble, but I love your channel

[@nootnootnits]

I won the Under 18 at this tournament (then called the iGates tournament) about a decade ago. I met Nigel (who actually signed the board I won as my prize) minutes after he extended Alistair Richards' phony opening bingo of KARYOTE* to PRO(KARYOTE) lmao

[@wanderer15]

Wow! He didn't challenge KARYOTE*?!?!

[@cantaloupegodling352]

I was thinking if I was 300 points behind I would want to just quit but actually I think I wouldn't because you don't give up a chance to get your ass beat by Nigel Richards and see the phenomenal plays he makes without even needing to

[@gerard0949]

I don't give a shit about scrabble but I've watched all of these videos. Totally fascinating

[@aleksandarnikolov144]

Truly discombobulating!

[@skitsadoodle5194]

I literally spotted ANON on the board as a beginner player!

[@MichaelDarrow-tr1mn]

of course he finds it. nigel is an anagram of angel.

[@domino14]

Born too late to explore the world, too early to explore the galaxy, just in time to watch Nigel Richards tear shit up.

[@geoffnolan1053]

I would love to know, how long did Nigel take before making this move? Did he think about it long?

[@wanderer15]

I couldn’t say for sure, but having played Nigel 10 times now in my own career, I can tell you that it’s exceedingly rare to see him take more than a minute on ANY move, no matter how complex.

[@grisus7254]

Remember that such long words don’t show up in games that often partly BECAUSE people haven’t learned them, just a disclaimer worth mentioning when showcasing the deminishing returns of learning them in terms of ”fraction of games that include 11 letter words”

[@wanderer15]

Very true - good point. On the other hand, large data sets of AI vs AI games suggest that even with perfect play finding, 11 letter bingos occur approximately once in every 6,500 games. And human beings are slightly more likely to repeatedly shoot for a specific possibility long in advance, knowing no human will detect such an unlikely plan and block, which slightly tips the scales back towards humans again.

[@rdspam]

Consecutive moves in a row! Impressive!

[@wanderer15]

Yeah, somehow didn't hear the redundancy when I said this...oops!

[@GEB_Rosee_PPS]

first time ever hearing of that game, but god dam this is interesting!

[@MichaelDarrow-tr1mn]

knowing nigel, he'd probably find a way to play KNICKKNACK

[@CMBurns1000]

2 letter words and names?! In Germany that’d be considered kindergarten championships 😂

[@sabrinawelsh3543]

At this point, I'm convinced that Nigel is a god among men.

[@fscreations7373]

This was an amazing video. Thank you

[@vanshjain3428]

Absolutely amazing video cheers mate

[@cadesummers5866]

Life goal: get people in your life that talk about you like Will Anderson talks about Nigel Richards

[@stevehartsman6487]

Absolutely jaw-dropping play! What's the level above "godlike" because I think Nigel has officially passed it. Love your videos!

[@squadxzo]

Really cool play, it would be cool to see casters reaction if they had casters overwatching that board.

[@wvuvino21]

Nigel!!! 🎉

[@AlphaeusNg]

The magnus of scrabbles

[@GekkiSpeedruns]

Will uses Nigel Richards like GothamChess uses Magnus Carlsen

[@ozzienemo]

the fact that rajiv challenged it as well-

[@kujojotarostandoceanman2641]

props to Rajiv to not quit the game after getting hit by so much devastating plays

[@BodywiseMustard]

1:27 bottom left you mean "to PRISE". Prying is interloping.

[@MrSfein1]

excellent game, excellent analysis

[@SpencerHHO]

I hope he allows scientists to study his brain. He's well and truly a savant. The fact that he is the undisputed GOAT of multiple forms of English AND FRENCH is insane.

[@natebengtson5252]

Does anyone know if there’s a link to see the commentator’s live reactions when Nigel played Pernoctated? Would love to see if it exists!

[@wanderer15]

This game wasn't livestreamed, sadly, but nearly immediately after it was completed, word started to ripple through the tournament community that something crazy had just occurred.

[@paulmorphy6187]

As a non-scrabble player but an avid chess player I guess learning long words that you may never use is a bit like learning certain endgames in chess.....for example the Knight+Bishop mate...its a complicated checkmate that takes a very good memory to retain the technique but you might not even see it once in your chess career and if you do it might save you half a point! I personally have never encountered it after 30 years of playing and I studied the ending in about 2002 very deeply, since then I have all but forgotten it.

[@LasCosasDeBrunin]

Me and a friend were talking once about the strangest mates we could come up with, as ofc the B+K mate was the first one we mentioned. Funny enough, in his next game in the tournament he was playing he had to perform it, with half the hall watching. It's a delight using obscure or "useless" knowleadge in a real situation.

[@MakinMoneyISeasy]

Luvvy is not a word in the dictionary. - Merriam Webster

[@atsra_]

I was so excited to find influxes before you revealed it - my first time doing so watching one of these videos!

[@wanderer15]

Great job, not the easiest one to spot!

[@leowstev]

If I'm the opponent, I'd probably challenge each word Nigel plays to give him more +5s to his record score 😂

[@Noneblue39]

thats actually insane

[@LRXC1]

Just wow

[@SteveBennett1]

So what were the 4 specific interesting things alluded to at the start?

[@wanderer15]

I think I should’ve put “set a new high score” as second on the list. Play an 11 letter word, triple-triple with an X, and play 5 consecutive bingos would round out the list!

[@MarioOLL6251]

Yo hi Will, love your videos, hope you reach 50K subs soon!

[@wanderer15]

Thank you! Just trying to stick with it, release something each week, and improve my skills!

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

is pernoctate that archaic? i already knew that word without grinding

[@doughyjoey_8742]

I'd love to see a video explaining what a sticky S is and maybe a few examples. Like how "Kans" only takes an S and is valid, but just Kan without the S is invalid. Could do other letters with words like unfazed that only take a D. A sticky letter series of sorts or something 😅

[@sullywinn4225]

Damn, even when Nigel "evens the game" 1:53, he's still ahead!

[@Hanakooh]

EFINSUX- wait no, UNFIXES 😂

[@NinjaDog251]

When you find checkmate, look for a better move!

[@enochnwali]

Class !

[@Mx_M29]

LOL AWESOME my friend and i have an inside joke of using Pernoctate in very mundane sentences

[@tranonehalf]

Nice find!