The French Scrabble Champion who doesn't speak French

[@AlexDings]

PLEASE NOTE: my regular content is in German, so subscribing only makes sense if you speak the language 🙂 If you'd like to give Scrabble a try after watching this, I highly recommend you try playing on woogles.io/ (start by going to "Play a computer" and selecting BeginnerBot) and join our Discord server, where we are happy to welcome beginners and help them out: discord.com/invite/GqkUqA7ENm To learn about strategy, take a look at this free handbook compiled by expert players: www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com/ I forgot to explain in the video what a 'bingo' is - hopefully it is clear from the context that this means playing all of your letters at once, and that this nets you a bonus of 50 points! Also, the stat at 3:53 has become obsolete since David Eldar clinched his second World Championship title - just weeks after I uploaded this video. Check out these Scrabble content creators: www.youtube.com/@wanderer15 (Will Anderson, who has some great short videos on Nigel) www.youtube.com/@mackmeller (matches against an engine + some content geared towards beginners) www.youtube.com/@axcertypo (Josh Sokol, more of a Scrabble streamer) Some further resources to learn more about Scrabble: Quackle (the engine shown in the video): people.csail.mit.edu/jasonkb/quackle/ Word study: aerolith.org And last but not least, a great way to learn is to watch tournament games with expert commentary. Here's my favourite such game (a small clip of which we saw in the video): kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIa5ZoeLl8R2raM

[@mettataurr]

time to learn german dictionary

[@majormononoke8958]

You are German? Really i would have never guessed it ...

[@AlexDings]

@@majormononoke8958 I know lol. But people might assume my other content is in badly pronounced English rather than German, too ;-)

[@rottenavocado7647]

Well, I'm subscribing anyway because this was an excellent video

[@levig6238]

@@AlexDingsich lerne Deutsch

[@LivingDeathGuy]

"Using an engine would make him worse" is such a banger compliment

[@MikhailFederov]

No it’s not. All it says is the engine was badly designed

[@a.lollipop]

​@@MikhailFederov it clearly isn't badly designed if it beats almost every top player (as shown on the table in the video), Nigel is just on another level.

[@bennemann]

When I heard that in the video, I started laughing out loud in a way that, in the past, happened when I was faced with an idea profoundly sublime or unknowable (e.g. the scale of the Universe) and all my brain could do to cope with processing the realization was to laugh. That's how insane Nigel's brain is for my brain to understand.

[@MCoTEDDY]

@@a.lollipop if scrable was as popular as chess or go the ai would be far better. But it's not and so the ai is sub par as interest for developing superhuman scrabble ai is just not there. So in that sense if we compare the scrabble ai against top chess engines, it's "bad" in comparison.

[@a.lollipop]

@@MCoTEDDY you're right it could be better if there more people developing scrabble AIs, -but does it really matter if- -it's already better than everyone but a- -single person? Just because it's not the- -best it could be doesn't mean it's badly- -designed.- It is also much harder to design good scrabble AI in general, I'm pretty sure the video talks about this. It's a complex game. That's why the chess AI is relatively better edit: sorry, I thought you were the same person as before, thats why I thought the badly designed thing again.

[@NG-gy6iv]

I admire this mans dedication to not learning French

[@TheCraftyPete]

This comment really opened my eyes to the silliness of that. 😂

[@HenrikMyrhaug]

Honestly, knowing the spelling of words does nothing in terms of teaching you what the words mean, how they can be combined in sentences, let alone being able to pronounce or understand what you are hearing. I had a really bad french teacher once, who due to reasons only gave me a packet which was a word list for me to memorize, and by the end of the year, I knew most of the words, but couldn't speak or understand a single sentence, and I failed the subject.

[@johnkingsize]

@@HenrikMyrhaug I think that's the point of the comment. Learning each and every single word in the language's lexicon without learning the language itself is probably the very most effort one can spend in learning French without actually learning the language. Although this probably doesn't apply to Nigel given how his memory seems to work.

[@MeatBunFul]

Literally the worst language. Worst people

[@HenrikMyrhaug]

​@@johnkingsize Yes, and my point was the comment is partially wrong. Nigel isn't "dedicated to not learning French", he simply isn't doing anything which requires/ benefits from learning it. Knowing a language doesn't make you any better at scrabble, as scrabble requires extensive memorisation of word lists without necessarily knowing what every word means, something which Nigel is extremely good at. As such, it is much easier for Nigel to only memorize the word list, instead of also learning the grammar, pronounciation, sentence structure, etc. of the language, when that does nothing to help with scrabble.

[@kheireddineattala1281]

scrabble noob: just learn the words expert youtuber: actually there is a lot more to that, .... nigel: just learn the words

[@obiwancannoli1920]

Bell curve meme

[@calvinnguyen1870]

The fact that we know Nigel isn’t cheating because he literally outperforms all existing scrabble AI is so funny to me. He’s so good that cheating would actually be a handicap.

[@Max24871]

Or he wrote his own

[@dextrosity7350]

@@Max24871that would be even more impressive considering he has no idea how to

[@dextrosity7350]

@@Max24871and it would have had to be 20 years ago

[@hrobertson7575]

This is such an excellent video, Alex. Great job! ❤

[@HuslWusl]

Nigel has some kind of "I don't know, I just got here" vibes. What an amazing guy, his skills are absolutely ridiculous and the fact that he doesn't even really know how he got so good is hilarious

[@0x13horizon4]

What’s funny about this comment is that this is a rare case where “talent” would be more appropriate to describe a person’s, in this case Nigel’s ability, than “skill”.

[@FPRobber]

It reminds me of that scene in One Punch Man where some opponent asks for Saitama's secret (how he got so basically infinitely strong) and he finally tells his secret and it's just "I run 10 miles every day and do 100 pushups". "How did you learn to play French Scrabble perfectly in such a short time?" "I read a list of all the allowed words"

[@HuslWusl]

@@FPRobber seems about right. Then Nigel, like Saitame, goes around and absolutely annihilates every opponent, even the ones that are programmed (Bots/Boros) to never lose.

[@Concentrum]

@@0x13horizon4 ability and skill are pretty synonymous in your usage of the words. as far as i can tell, talent would be best described as a sort of extraordinary innate intuition for some sort of process or activity. but, as far as i can tell, the development of all intuition relies on practice, therefore i would disagree with your statement. he may be talented, but it was the consistent practice of his field of talent which made him the best at it. i would even go so far as to claim that a perceivable notion of talent is something which can universally be acquired through rigorous practice: talent can be gained, at which point it becomes completely synonymous with skill again, as the two eventually become indistinguishable.

[@0x13horizon4]

@@Concentrum I disagree but don’t feel the need to expand on why, so have it your way

[@bulldozer8950]

What’s funny is that outside of scrabble, he memorized a completely useless set of words. He could have (presumably) spent another 9weeks memorizing the English translations and know French. But instead he only knows they are French words, so he can look at any set of letters and tell you “yup that’s French” or “nah not French” and that’s it. Which is very funny to me for some reason.

[@gamemeister27]

Knowing the English translations only gives you vocabulary, not grammar. After learning grammar, he could then type in the language and read the language, but not speak the language. He'd then have to learn how to pronounce the words, and learn to listen to them as well.

[@DBZVelena]

​@@gamemeister27 and all of that would be useless if the goal is only to play and win the game. So he didn't bother. just memorised what he could use for play.

[@Eduardo_Espinoza]

he's not going to do any interviews anyways

[@gamemeister27]

@@DBZVelena yup

[@Gnome-kc7pr]

I love that, its just the right amount of effort.

[@axcertypo]

Not sure if this is a "glitch", or rather a clue about how Nigel's memory works, or just a friendly attempt to troll me. I have played Nigel Richards 5 times over the board, and in two of those games, Nigel has "held" one of my valid moves, indicating an uncertainty about the validity of my play. Both times, I had played a word that most top experts wouldn't have hesitated to accept as valid. He didn't end up challenging either of them. The first time he held one of my words, it was a 3 letter word. My entire life flashed before my eyes when I heard his cue. We all know that "Nigel knows better", so even if he questions even a 3 letter word, it is very difficult to trust oneself over him.

[@abee127]

What's the distinction between a hold and a challenge? Can you hold the clock if you're considering challenging?

[@axcertypo]

@@abee127 you hold when you are considering challenging, but your clock runs until you decide whether or not to challenge. The hold indicates to your opponent that there might be a challenge, and they are not allowed to mix the tiles they left over with new ones unless the hold is released. You can only hold if you are unsure of a word that has just been played.

[@psymar]

It's probably that he has to stop and review his memory. After all, he talks about reviewing the pages in his mind, so it is not that he has necessarily memorized every word, but that he has memorized the *appearance* of them in the dictionary. Meaning he has to review the dictionary pages to check if a word is valid.

[@axcertypo]

@@psymar yes, this is likely the reason why, though that doesn't explain his lightning-fast ability to find valid words and align them on his rack. He potentially looks for the word on its page once his intuition finds it over the board, but there is some other form of memory at play as well. Nobody that I've talked to has ever had Nigel hold them on a single play and not challenge.

[@Derperfier]

He could also just be doing it for mindgames, giving himself more time, etc.

[@MrBottleNeck]

The answer is simple! Nigel just developed he's own Scrabble AI two decades ago on device no bigger than a phone which gives him answers through vibrotactile morse code. He also made an ocular prosthesis with a built in camera that is connected to his handheld supercomputer through his blood vessels. You might be wondering how these gadgets are charged? Well, with the perplexed faces of his opponents, of course.

[@D.S69]

hahaha

[@BigDBrian]

beads?

[@wronghorsebatterystaple]

A certain American GM might have helped him?

[@tdillpickleh4684]

@@wronghorsebatterystaplea certain GM who just got smoked by a 13 year old IM? 😂

[@wronghorsebatterystaple]

@@tdillpickleh4684I guess he only uses it against Magnus 😂

[@lolli_popples]

People: Nigel is literally a robot. Experts: Actually he can’t be a robot, there are no robots who are that good.

[@emctwoo]

The other proof of Nigel’s absurd skill is how there’s like 2 hours of yt videos from top players explaining intricate scrabble details just so we can even begin to comprehend how good he is. Like, he’s so good you need significant insight into the game to even grasp his skill. It’s also just really nice to see top competitors so respectful of each other to just be this positive and admiring of their game’s top player. This was also honestly helpful cause at times Will would say things about how good Nigel’s play was that I wouldn’t even fully grasp with this context and makes them that much more astonishing.

[@AlexDings]

That partly comes from Nigel being so humble and unassuming. If he was an arrogant jerk, I'm not sure how we would be talking about him

[@emctwoo]

@@AlexDings there really is something endlessly satisfying about somebody who truly loves what they do perform at the highest level and share that passion with us.

[@zednos]

@@AlexDings Could you be arrogant at being more skilled than everyone at everyday tasks, like ordering mcdonalds, putting grocery away in kitchen cabinets, filling out work timecard? Also, you might think twice about accepting an interview from a media outlet that tells you 'Wow, amazing you can order a Big Mac every time you want it! How is it possible? Would you like to be interviewed?' It'd be weird, right?

[@Jivvi]

@@emctwoo The craziest part is Scrabble is just a hobby to him. His real passion is cycling.

[@jero37]

Reminds me of the scene from Good Will Hunting where the Professor is distraught over the fact that he's one of the few people that can discern the difference between himself and Will. Fortunately Nigel wants to play Scrabble.

[@tullochgorum6323]

At Cambridge Uni in the '70s I knew a postgrad student from the Frei Universitat in Berlin who claimed he had memorised dozens of volumes of the collected works of Marx. To test him we took the 900 page volume of the Grundrisse and read him a random sentence. He immediately provided not only the page number but the line on the page...

[@ShortArmOfGod]

Of all the things to waste time memorizing...

[@tullochgorum6323]

@@ShortArmOfGod Well, if you're a professional Marxist scholar as he was, I would suggest that this makes perfect sense. Certainly more sense than learning a foreign dictionary by rote without knowing the meaning of the words...

[@saladien9987]

Is he still around?

[@citizenkane2349]

​@@tullochgorum6323a Marxist scholar. Even more of a waste.

[@D.S.handle]

Could be advanced mnemonics.

[@Plykiya]

The constantly changing memes of Nigel's face really kept my attention through the entire video. Great speaking as well. Thank you for your hard work.

[@BadDrummerCarl]

My favourite part of this is the fact that in tournaments, commentators will default to Nigel over the computer analysis. Imagine if that was the case in Chess with Magnus Carlsen or any other strategic board game and their respective 'Greatest ever' player

[@AlexDings]

In part this is because Scrabble engines still have a long way to go before being Stockfish-like. The difference in work that has been put into them compared to chess is, unsurprisingly, not even remotely in the same ballpark. Here's a nice piece on that medium.com/@14domino/scrabble-is-nowhere-close-to-a-solved-game-6628ec9f5ab0

[@DrZaius3141]

To some extent this does happen in chess, but mostly in shorter time formats. Sometimes, the BEST move isn't the top engine move but rather the move that makes the position more complicated for your opponent (meaning they might have to spend more time calculating). This occurs in rapid chess (~15min per player per game), but becomes very obvious in bullet format (~1min per player per game) with stalemate traps and the like.

[@AtomicHaze]

There are still occasions where stockfish needs a few solid minutes to comprehend Magnus moves before it realises how strong it is.

[@The9thDoctor]

​@@DrZaius3141 stockfish actually added that recently lol (favors more complex positions)

[@UnshavenStatue]

@@DrZaius3141well no, the engine move would lead to better positions, but that's because the engine assumes its opponent is competent. humans playing blitz are playing psychology mixed with chess, and in that respect, such moves are okay. but if humans tried such moves against engines, they'd be crushed.

[@cheesychi8317]

I'm dead. This man broke scrabble minds so hard that people now WANT him to memorize their entire language. Iceland tried it

[@cbot9302]

Icelandic is kind of the standard for proving your a savant with an insane memory. I remember watching a documentary where a dude became basically fluent in Icelandic in a couple of weeks and the news crew interviewing him was flabbergasted. Apparently it's one of the most difficult languages

[@FenceThis]

@@cbot9302 I believe it was in 4 days

[@_KondoIsami_]

​@@cbot9302 The Foreign Service Institute suggests 1,100 class hours for English speakers to learn Icelandic, which is half the time needed for Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic, and nearly double the time required for Spanish. However, in reality, it's closer to 2,200 hours to achieve fluency in Icelandic since the FSI estimate doesn't account for self-study and immersion, where a lot of the learning takes place. And just to be clear, fluency does not equate to native-level proficiency, which would require a much longer commitment.

[@connoisseurofcookies2047]

The challenge with Icelandic Scrabble would be the variety of forms a word can take, called 'bending.' Take the word horse, which in English has two forms/spellings (horse, horses). In Icelandic it has 16 forms (hestur, hest, hesti, hests, hestar, hesta, hestum, hesta, hesturinn, hestinn, hestinum, hestsins, hestarnir, hestana, hestunum, hestanna.) And those are just nouns, there are different forms for verbs as well. As a matter of fact, horse is arguably one of the easiest and is used to make the concept easier to understand for native speakers in school. Thing is once you learn Icelandic grammar these become easy or intuitive to predict but would be a challenge for someone relying on raw memory.

[@FenceThis]

@@connoisseurofcookies2047 you mentioned hesta twice, so is it only 15 ?

[@Marci.B]

Nigel's power of suggestion is so great that at 19:56 when explaining how he played "byagee" instead of "bhagee", you write that "he used the Y instead of the.... Y"

[@chugg159]

Nigel Richards is like One Punch Man. He trained so hard that he grew a beard, and nobody believes him when he says it's just hard work.

[@max7971]

It really isn’t at this point. No ammount of hard work would produce such a dominant performance, it’s a combination of genes+dedication, and frankly you belittle other participants by saying that it’s “just hard work” implying that they didn’t work hard enough to win. We are all different, and his brain has unique memory and analytical skills, that allow him to dominate the field.

[@aavamaki]

I think this is an accurate comparison but for a different reason: both Saitama and Nigel give a very basic answer of "I did some reasonable amount of hard work for a reasonable sounding time" to explain a completely unreasonable end result of being an invincible super hero in their chosen field.

[@chugg159]

@@max7971 Working smart and working hard don't work exclusively. He likely has a method to his learning that nobody else knows and he's working really hard using that method. Genetics I'm sure has plenty to do with it, but for someone to dominate so heavily (even beyond that of someone like Magnus Carlsen to his respective field), there must be a difference in strategy to how he remembers words in certain positions that has floated under the radar. Also compare this to video game speedrunning, if I may. You don't see major new time saves unless a new strategy is found. The paradigm of speedrunning, much like Chess, and much like Scrabble, is built upon the shoulders of the giants of the past. One strategy works for a really long time, gets optimized to a point of no more improvement, and then a new strategy is found.

[@pinheadlarry5616]

@@max7971that what he was trying to say though, saitama from one punch man famously did less training then most olympic athletes yet inexplicabley, even to him, became strong enough to punch a hole through a planet. People are constantly trying to ffgure out how he got so strong but the only answer he has is to train hard, because that's all he did. same with nigel, he did something incomprehensably hard and he doesn't even really know why he can do it and others can't.

[@colinmunro2632]

I don't even play. But your explanation of how superhuman Nigel is in all respects, interwoven with some intricacies of the game, was amazing. Thank you.

[@TheMrsFreckles]

Well, I didn't know absolutely nothing about Nigel or competitive Scrabble, yet I ended up watching the whole 48 mins. I very much appreciated the amount of effort that went into that video. A great storyline accompanied by a very clean analysis supported with lots of facts. Kudos to you, man.

[@azurefoxbh9280]

same and i only paused to marvel in how absurd this man is idk if that says a lot about how well the story telling was or how interesting of a man he is

[@GeMan11]

The fact the engine makes him worse is hysterical. Edit: just noticed your subs. It's crazy you made such a long vid with incridble quality. Way to go man

[@SomeRandomDevOpsGuy]

A perfect example of why a statistical outlier isn't always a result of poorly collecting your data. This was crazy interesting, and I don't even play scrabble other than with family sometimes. Nice upload.

[@aaronhelmsman]

I thought I was so clever on the chlorodyne question for finding chandler instead of children, only to be immediately humbled

[@mrdressup]

Such a great video. Simply structured, interesting story, never boring, not over-edited, no unnecessary dramatic music, sponsor breaks, etc. It's like I traveled in a time machine back to before KZbin became overly formulaic and commercialized. Hope you'll make some more English content in the future

[@AlexDings]

My channel wasn't even monetized yet when I uploaded this so that might explain why it doesn't feel commercialized 😀 A few other English-language videos are in the works.

[@thomasdawson2257]

Will Anderson sent me here. What a great video, really really puts his skill in perspective. Liked the memes too.

[@callmeandoru2627]

"Do you have any particular method for learning the words?" "No :))"

[@salmon-stan]

I knew it was coming and I still LOL’d.

[@Juttutin]

So I'm a Kiwi, and I had no idea that we had the world's Scrabble Grandmaster! Random side note, I used to know the world-champion jouster. Kiwi exceptionalism is real, but extremely niche! Lol.

[@elLooto]

Equally stunning was a German comparing someone to Don Bradman.

[@L1ama]

The first tournament he went to, he left work at 5, then biked for 14 hours from Christchurch to Dunedin in the rain overnight. Someone at the tournament offered him a ride home, and he said nah I'm good and biked back. If you've ever driven into Dunedin from the north you know that's especially awful, the last hour or so has about 400m of hill climbing.

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563]

​@@L1ama If this video is anything to go by, he can probably ride a bike in a way that consumes fewer calories than It would take to press on the gas.

[@staraprs]

This is an incredibly underrated video. I didn't expect to spend more than 5 minutes on it but I'm so glad I finished it because I felt like my mind was constantly blown at how crazy good this fellow kiwi is at what he does. I've seldom had such engaged enjoyment watching such a video and I wish I could forget what I'd watched to rewatch it with the same sheer disbelief at each new piece of information that is then compared to other top players.

[@AdventTour_net]

This showed up in my recommendations. I never expected long form Scrabble content to grip me, but this absolutely did. Way to go and congratulations in the amazing video.

[@thegrinderman1090]

I'm quite proud to have found 'tearjerker' in your puzzle, despite not playing Scrabble. But there's an enormous difference between finding it on a board where it's implied there's something huge available, and spotting it in a real game.

[@AlexDings]

Yeah, puzzles do have that effect, but that's still quite the find from you! Maybe you should give playing a try ;-)

[@xCorvus7x]

I suppose on some level you have to approach every gamestate you get this way.

[@AlexDings]

True, and I try to emulate this in my own game - whenever possible I try to tell myself "what if someone gave you this situation as a puzzle?" and deliberately try to search for wild, outside-the-box moves. That has helped me sometimes, but it's really difficult to do this consistently because you're doing so many things at the same time in a tournament game. In a German tournament game I missed the wonderful bingo of SNOBIETY (that word really is in the German word list). After the game, someone who had watched the live broadcast told me "you missed a nice bingo with the Y", and without even having to see the board or the letters again I *immediately* realized I could have played SNOBIETY. That's how weird this "puzzle effect" is.

[@xCorvus7x]

@@AlexDings Snobiety ist im deutschen Katalog? Gütiger, und was soll das heißen? Sieht wie'n Anglizismus aus, aber ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob das im Englischen als Wort durchgeht.

[@allylilith5605]

I found jerk and wasn't that proud

[@annalivingtv]

I watch a lot of in depth analysis videos on random topics- I’m definitely glad yours popped up I’ve really never considered strategic scrabble on a competitive scale! Also the fact that all your videos are German and specifically on scrabble makes it even more fun and unusual that you came on my feed lol

[@AlexDings]

In-depth videos on random stuff are my favourite genre, too 🙂 Thanks for watching.

[@karthik448]

Don't know why youtube suggested this to me and not sure why I watched through the whole thing as I've never played scrabble in my life. But one of the most fascinating videos I've watched on this platform. I'll probably never play scrabble even now but learnt some incredible stuff and the unexplainable genius of some humans.

[@lesfreresdelaquote1176]

Beside the incredible achievements of this guy, the reason he chose French is mainly due to the very high level of cognates between French and English (about 66%). There is a huge overlap in terms of vocabulary and spelling rules between the two languages. If you take any texts in English be it literature or news-papers, the number of common words is usually around 40%. In English dictionaries, the number of common words drops to 29%, simply because the lexicon is then much larger and includes a lot of a very rare words. So by focussing on verb conjugations and some regularity in spelling differences, you can acquire a pretty large lexicon of French in a few months, especially if you already have a huge knowledge of English beforehand. Again, his capacity to select the right spelling is incredible, but the guy seems to have an out of this world talent for pattern matching and I would not be surprise if he did not use this talent to learn French as a subset of the very large lexicon of English he already knows.

[@borisborcic]

Learning English by reading lots of it over a French language background resulted in surprise at how English language readers would tend to apprehend as a snub's affectation my innocent enough use of words rare to them. I hadn't realized my reflex habit to promote to my English lexicon any familiar French word as soon as I'd spot it used in an English language context. The rarer the word in English, the less likely the divergence in meaning from French, and this works against attention to relative frequencies when augmenting one's English vocabulary in this manner.

[@dextrodemon]

the bike ride thing is like something i learnt called a 'mind palace,' where you place the information around a place you know well. when i read about it, about 20 years ago in my first year of uni i memorized the order of a shuffled deck of cards and i can still easily recall the list now. i also made the cards into 'objects' which represented 5 cards. for example a hand of '2 of clubs, jack of diamonds, 3 of spades, 9 of spades, 3 of clubs' is the first hand, so it's only really remembering like 11 things, which isn't so hard. i have a bad memory too. so i can imagine someone with a gift and a few other mnemonic tricks up their sleeve could easily remember quite a lot of data without much issue, tho 500 pages of foreign words is something else. great video btw.

[@AlexDings]

While this is true, the memory palace technique is used by no Scrabble player that I know of - it's not quite the right purpose, partly because tens of thousands of items are a bit too much, but mostly because it doesn't help the task in the game. Nigel also says he doesn't use any specific techniques, so it's something else in his case. But I guess it's probably a similar process. For me and surely most other players, the similarities between words automatically group them into certain categories so that when I see some combination of letters, it's like stepping into a mental room where a bunch of similar words are all on display.

[@EvelynnEleonore]

I'm German, my betrothed is Thai, we play scrabble (and communicate in general) in English and they ALWAYS KICK MY ASS SO HARD. this is the beginning of my training arc. Teach me your ways alex o_o

[@AlexDings]

Hab ein paar Strategie-Videos auf meinem Kanal, guck da mal rein ;-)

[@reginaldforthright805]

Oh, a they-them. 😂

[@dedstar2132]

@@reginaldforthright805Is English even your first language?

[@hattyhide7544]

@@reginaldforthright805Uhhh… So I can’t tell if you are a vile person, or if you just have no reading comprehension skills 😂Using the term “they” like the OP refers to male, female and/or any other gender. The OP is using completely normal correct English, and the OP does not suggest anything about gender identity by what they wrote here. You clearly are not very intelligent…

[@eVill420]

@@reginaldforthright805 what?

[@zxkredo]

27:12 amazing, i cant even express how good this felt as a viewer! Amazing story telling not just through words, but through images and little suprises like this!

[@maxschmidt666]

I really believe that he makes simple mistakes, because he is focused on bigger things. While this sounds weird, think about this: Most people who are super deep into mathematics, physics, etc. use a calculator for simple things like addition or substracting basic numbers. Without this tool, they can get distracted very much. Although this is by no means THE explanation, for me it is ONE simple explanation for his simple mistakes.

[@朕是神]

Mathematics/phyics and computation are entirely different things, it's not just being bigger or not.

[@thy3047]

Thank you for putting the time and effort into making a video that explains this so clearly! Your narration was really gripping and the visual aids/annotations were hilarious; I also really appreciate hearing someone with knowledge and passion about their field discuss it in a way that's accessible to laymen like me :)

[@ericwiddison7523]

You did a great job explaining the reasons why Scrabble isn't just about playing the move that scores the most points. The whole thing was fascinating. It felt right that all this was from someone whose native language isn't English. Danke!

[@mr.100rupees3]

This is exactly what the French need, someone who doesn't speak French to humble them in their own field

[@ShunkBear]

Mes couilles sur ton front

[@romainviry3185]

As a French I find this fascinating and admirable.

[@antonnymus3499]

And again, he just played what the engine later conformed to be the best move. He outfrenched the French!

[@springinfialta106]

Even the most advanced forms of chess have some relation to recreational chess. However, the most advanced forms of Scrabble have no relation to recreational Scrabble. This is why Hasbro eventually stopped funding Scrabble tournaments in America as there was no ROI. A non-French speaker winning a French Scrabble tournament may be a tour-de-force at the expert level, but it is the antithesis of the recreational game where word knowledge (and not just letter order knowledge) is valued.

[@iankrasnow5383]

I've gone down the rabbit hole of Scrabble tournament history over the past week thanks to Will Anderson's youtube channel, which is probably why the algorithm suggested this video, and I find it fascinating how competitive the scene is, but also how niche it is at a tournament level. This is a game that nearly everyone alive has played in some form. We all have an old scrabble set that we break out once in a while at family gatherings, and online versions like "words with friends" have been incredibly popular. In comparison to Chess, the top Scrabble players are nowhere as well known, and fewer people follow it. I mean, people like Bobby Fisher and Magnus Carlsen are household names, and I don't even follow chess. Scrabble is also a game where it's much easier as a viewer to recognize a genius move. To really appreciate a high level chess game, you need to be pretty good at chess yourself or have someone explain it to you. I'm a terrible chess player, so watching it is not that interesting to me. With scrabble though, it's obvious that top players are geniuses to anyone who understands English and has played a few games of scrabble in their life. The low barrier to entry and popularity of playing it would make you think it should much more widely followed. And yes, obviously the game tree complexity of Scrabble is so much higher than Chess or even Go thanks to the element of randomness and the hundreds of thousands of valid moves (words). If the number of possible Go games is on the order of 10^300, then the number of possible scrabble games is probably roughly the power set of that game space (a number on the order of 2^10^n, where 10^n would be the number of possible games if you knew the order of tiles in advance, though this is just an educated guess. If n > 80, then the number of digits would outnumber the quantity of particles in the universe). Yet it's still fairly easy to follow the course of a game.

[@reginaldforthright805]

Chess is popular because it’s legendary, whereas scrabble is something for old ladies

[@ramuk1933]

"...can be played in any language" I'd like to see a game of Chinese Scrabble.

[@AlexDings]

Good point!

[@lwagner1723]

Lol Chinese is technically pictograms. I would like to see what that game would look like 😂

[@ozzi9816]

It’s not possible in Chinese I don’t think but Japanese has a version that uses hiragana/katakana. Arabic would probably also be impossible due to letters changing in shape depending on what’s next to them

[@andrewnotgonnatellya7019]

There's a Pinyin version

[@ozzi9816]

Actually I forgot that Chinese has an “alphabet” of sorts. Each basic sound is represented with a kanji that starts with it, kind of like “a for apple” “b for boy” etc. So theoretically you could make a Chinese scrabble with that.

[@pyre753]

Alex, this was a fantastic video. Seriously great work. I knew nothing about Scabble going into it but your explanations made the beauty of his game really understandable. Thanks for sharing.

[@sadisticmystic]

18:45 (A)U(B)ER(G)iNES was from Ron Tiekert, not Jim Geary (and as noted, the G was also pre-placed since you need at least three pre-placed letters to make a 10). Geary's WATER(Z)O(O)I also went through disconnected tiles, rather than (ZO) which wouldn't have been valid in that 1995 OSPD game.

[@AlexDings]

D'oh! There's a bunch of typos etc. in the video about which I don't care, but I don't like having gotten these ones wrong. Thanks for the correction.

[@sharpeningtheaxe]

Wow, this was an incredible video!!! The way you presented everything was so engaging! I loved it!

[@ThatScrubWolf]

I don't remember ever playing Scrabble or having really any interest in it, but this was fascinating. What I would give to be currently living in a future where we can truly understand the workings of the brain and what allows these exceptional examples of superhuman achievements.

[@borisborcic]

Why can't we help talking of the brain in the singular to speak of brains in their multitude and diversity, but don't do so when talking, say, of stars?

[@corporatecapitalism]

@@borisborcicbecause stars aren’t necessarily that different from each other and usually operate the same way

[@borisborcic]

@@corporatecapitalism assuming this true, that would at best be cause to do the exact converse -- to speak of the star and the brainS -- and not as we do, of the starS and the brain.

[@person8064]

​@@borisborcic when we say "stars" we refer to the physical objects that exist. When we say "brain" we refer not to the organ, but to the state of being -- the unified human experience

[@borisborcic]

@@person8064 and you are adding this to a context prompted by an extraordinary performance of a particular person and brain that no other dreams to emulate. I surmise that "the unified experience" is a myth.

[@akasakasaka]

THE funniest thing for me, is that the second best scrabble player canidate literally cannot find words to describe Nigel

[@hlarjay7503]

Imagine buying a board game just to dunk on your son on but he ends up being the literal best player to ever live

[@noseman123]

I love this video. I keep coming back to it. You have a great voice for storytelling. Your narration really makes this video.

[@ConlangKrishna]

Schönes, unterhaltsames Video! As a hobby linguist, I have to think of one of the basic statements of linguistics: The form of a word (phonology) does not indicate its meaning (semantics). Thus our human brain must have at least two mostly independent systems when working with language. Nigel seems to completely leave out the semantic system for optimal use of the phonological/combinatory system. And successfully so!

[@RainerGigachad]

Meddl! Fascinating deep dive. You really did something magical here by combining Nigels Persona with the quirks and features of scrabble to create an enticing, easy to understand documentary. Very well done!

[@dubbz1356]

For the puzzle at 17:37, "Chandler" also works and is an equal number of points since the blank is still on the double letter. It is a harder word to see though, and I'm not sure why I found it before the answer shown in the video lol

[@kb27787]

I also came up with chandler before children lol I think it's the "e" and we automatically look to put the d or the r at the end of it before we consider the n.

[@kirtil5177]

@@kb27787 yeah it feels natural to try placing "er" at the end of the word first before thinking of other combinations

[@ntn_ntn_]

Second time watching this video all the way through. I haven't played a game of Scrabble for like 10 years, and I don't have intentions of doing so any time soon, but this subject is incredibly interesting to me, and you present it so well! You're a fantastic and captivating speaker.

[@oliviarose6590]

It’s nearly 5am and I did not expect to be here watching a 48 minute video and becoming highly invested in competitive scrabble

[@allezeitderwelt]

As someone who plays scrabble with my broken french against native speakers, I feel like this is the documentary for me.

[@doleperfection]

I dont play Scrabble (well), and I dont watch boardgames on YT. But the algorithm gods brought me to you, and im so glad they did! What a marvelous video. ❤

[@lielos1964]

At 24:28, "Affichage par négatif croissant" means "Sort by increasing negative", it has nothing to do with croissants ^^ Negative is probably the french translation for the 'fewest points missed' in this case.

[@AlexDings]

I know, I speak French. It was just a joke 🙂

[@Purriah]

This has been in my recommended at least 20 times in the two weeks. Fine. I’ll watch.

[@entitxy_4810]

For Nigel, it's just learning words; the rest of how best to play the game may as well be hard-wired into him.

[@JayTheYggdrasil]

I won't spoil it, but that is a crazy way to show that someone isn't cheating. Makes me question if calling him a "computer", like many have in the video, is even accurate lol.

[@AlexDings]

The parallels to computer software is eerie - finding every move equally easy, total lack of cognitive biases in gameplay, no concept of bluffing (Nigel doesn't play invalid moves on purpose, which almost everyone else does at the top), the rare mistakes looking like basic software bugs. It's also telling that cheating is not part of the conversation about Nigel within the (English) Scrabble scene at all. Everyone knows he's legit. The only reason I even touched on this was because I figured viewers from outside Scrabble would be likely to bring up that possibility in the comments. This is also interesting because there _have_ been cheating scandals in Scrabble. I don't think Will or I will ever make a video about that because it's an ugly topic and not what we want Scrabble to be known for, but there have been a small (like three or four) number of high-profile cases of cheating. (Which in Scrabble amounts to things like hiding the blank tiles in your lap before a game so that you can smuggle them on your rack at some point.)

[@proxima8219]

I have never played scarble in my life (it's not a very popular board game in Russian), but you essay is just frankly fascinating! The narrative is very easy to follow, it's also quite cohesive, I really appreciate the way you made the video "beginner-friendly", I understood most of the stuff about the game itself from context, clear visual aids and nice pacing Thank you for your research and hard work :D Learning about great human minds will forever charm me in a unique way

[@kyle98dkek90]

What a fantastic video! I rarely comment on KZbin videos, but this content necessitated it. As someone who has no interest in Scrabble and has probably only played a handful of games in his lifetime, I still couldn't help but watch this amazing synopsis and analysis of a unique mind all the way to the end. I almost want to say I'm saddened by the fact that Nigel is not as recognizable to the layperson (at least he was unknown to me an hour ago) as perhaps Magnus Carlsen, but considering his indifferent and unassuming personality, I'm sure Nigel prefers it that way. And honestly, to put him into the same realm as some of the other better-known personalities may very well be a discredit to the dominance he asserts in his craft. Thank you for introducing me to this Legend. He's not one I'll forget anytime soon.

[@circeus]

I appreciate the fact that you specifically covered the Duplicate, because of course to us french players (who historically don't really pay attention to the face-to-face format even after it was reintroduced in official competition), that is the part where Nigel truly comes in out of left field. Also, as a neurodivergent person, let me tell you he rings HUGE vibes for neurodivergence.

[@reginaldforthright805]

Haha neurodivergence is just a made up buzzword, madame.

[@circeus]

@@reginaldforthright805 Have I got news to you: *all* words are made up 😏

[@reginaldforthright805]

@@circeus weird works; no need for self-aggrandizing jargon, madame.

[@АнастасияМакарович]

my thoughts exactly, man's got that special autism superpowers hia pattern recognition is crazy

[@kyanight]

​@@АнастасияМакарович it's the fact he doesn't even feel the need to try to explain how, also if i'm not mistaken isn't the guy with the photographic memory that draws cities also autistic? isn't photographic memory commonly associated with autism?

[@andremaines]

I only have a mild interest in Scrabble but this video goes to show that when someone is really passionate about a subject that passion is infectious and I really enjoyed watching the whole video and hearing you go into detail explaining the intricacies of Nigel’s game. Well done!

[@dadalo5]

Brilliant, engaging video. Thank you for a great 48! minutes (I had to double-take at that length because it flew by

[@Madinko12]

I thought I already knew the story of Nigel, so I really thought this video was going to be yet another on the same topic. But I truly got hooked. Very nicely done video that really digs deep into the details and pays a perfect tribute to this incredible player. Many thanks.

[@iwersonsch5131]

Wow. I saw CHaNDLER at the second quiz and had no idea whether it is actually a word, apparently it is and means candlemaker (edit: small a for the blank)

[@AlexDings]

Yes, I forgot to mention that alternative to CHiLDREN

[@CestMagnify]

Thank you SO much for telling me a story about your hobby!

[@nextkestrel]

I loved this video, I watched all 48m59s of it. However, I have just one question. Could we expect Nigel to enter any more tournaments in different foreign languages? As a French speaker I love all the french stuff in this video as well. Wonderful analysis on all of this. Thank you for dumbing it down and explaining it to non-Scrabble players like me.

[@AlexDings]

There's been rumors of him targeting Spanish, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. The one time I met Nigel myself, I unsuccessfully tried to convince him to learn the German word list so he can play in our tournaments 😀

[@Asterism_Desmos]

@@AlexDingsWas be nice when you met him?

[@AlexDings]

@@Asterism_Desmos Yes, very nice. Like I talked about in the last part of the video, no attitude whatsoever.

[@montgomeryfitzpatrick473]

The real Rainman visited our school in a small town in Idaho in late 90s and he had memorized our phone book the previous evening

[@philippenachtergal6077]

Well, with French, you would certainly do yourself a favor by learning some grammar: - how to conjugate "normal" verbs - which type of words have a plural and or feminine form and how to form the plural and feminine using the male singular form But this of course requires to be able to also recognize what is a verb which is not too complex for most verbs but there are some words with an ending that can make you think that they are verb when they are not and there is no directly related verb like "boulanger" (baker) or "gendre" (son-in-law). And to know if a word can have a plural or feminine form, you basically need to recognize if it's a noun, adverb, adjective, pronoun etc... Some endings are almost always adverbs (-ement -emment -amment -ément with of course many exceptions) but for most words, you just have to know. Learning how adverbs can usually be formed from adjective is also useful but there are so many exceptions and adjectives with no directly related adverb ( like colors or "bancal" though people would understand what the non-existing "bancalement" would mean)

[@AlexDings]

I'm sure Nigel probably noticed many of these patterns, but he also apparently figured that using them to learn the words wouldn't help because there's always exceptions, as you pointed out.

[@RabbitEarsCh]

The memes every time you cut back to a picture of Nigel are so good. Fantastic video, thank you for giving me context to what an incredible player Nigel is. The Marion Tinsley comparison is, in my view, more than appropriate.

[@sverrg]

I play in both Icelandic and English, the difference is notable but the Icelandic version is probably easier, assuming you speak both languages fluently. That is because you can often add one or two letters to a word to subtly change its meaning/context

[@makeshiftmiki]

What a wonderful video essay. Scrabble gives me anxiety and I still watched 48 mins of you talking about it. Maybe you could think about doing more video essays? It seems many people, internationally, enjoyed this project.

[@AlexDings]

Scrabble gives you anxiety?! I love watching video essays, it's a great format. I'll probably make a handful of long-ish videos about Scrabble.

[@Seafowl]

It’s the year 2030. A new scrabble video is made, “How Nigel memorized 2 million Icelandic words 4 hours before a tournament”

[@stefunnylim]

as many others have mentioned, this was a really really interesting and well done video! i don't play scrabble at all (tho i do watch random videos about random topics) so maybe that's why this video appeared on my homepage, really glad i clicked in! this was really cool!

[@cimadev]

I need to point out (hoping that noone else has) that the text at 20:08 says "Accidentally used the Y instead of the Y", which is very funny to me, given the context

[@themroc8231]

24:25 "affichage par négative croissant" means "display by increasing negative" or "display by negative in asending order". "Croissant" originally means "growing", so in a tabulation it means by " by "increasing value", and when refering to the phases of the moon a "moon crescent" or "croissant de lune" designates a partial phase of the moon on the way to the full moon. So you can see how, by analogy, the word "crescent" would come to designate the partial-moon-shaped pastry later.

[@AlexDings]

I'm amazed by how many people have commented this now. And I thought we Germans didn't understand jokes 🙂

[@rolandgeb9970]

I very much believe he has a photographic memory. In 2014 a colleague of mine in university claimed she has a photographic memory and never learns for any exams. She explained that she simply opens a book for example, looks at the two pages for a short time and more or less makes an internal image from them... not sure if it makes a cklicking sound in her head as well. Nevertheless when the exam takes place she let the pages pop up in her mind and copys the parts she thinks are sufficent for the answer. Maybe simulation therory is "reality" and some people simply learned - maybe by accident - how to use parts to their advantage, not realizing how special their feats are.

[@Hazy_Heart]

Loved the "chuck norris meme" style nigel memes throughout the video. One of my favorite meme formats, made so much better by being so well earned legend himself.

[@elemenoQ]

Absolutely brilliant video, thank you for this!

[@Chadok89]

I have a question regarding the icelandic challenge...if there are so many words... isn't it easier? Like...at what point it becomes harder to find a wrong word than one existing?! More words = more options!

[@AlexDings]

Yeah there are more options in the game, but you still need to learn the words beforehand...

[@mf_01]

It would make guessing more likely to output a real word. Also, there may be some statistics thing that says he doesn't need to memorize all the words, only as many (or more) than his opponent. Then just pretend the other words don't exist and play your knowledge bank of words almost perfectly. Of course this would make it hard to challenge words. But it would also make it harder for your opponent to challenge words, assuming they haven't memorized all of them. I also don't know any scrabble strategy or statistics really.

[@roxane1237]

​@@mf_01I don't think you realize how many random combinations there are with all the letters in the alphabet and a various amount of letters per word. Even if a language has a huge vocabulary, it's just so far from all the possible random combinations you could create. I don't think that the difference in vocabulary in Icelandic is significant compared to the amount of random combinations possible. With a three letters word and an alphabet of 26 letters you already have 26*26*26 combinations possible.

[@kitebrethren]

I think Nigel is secretly a time lord. He stops time every move to search through the dictionary to find a good word.

[@misteral9045]

Nigel's technique kinda makes sense to me. I'm not a very good artist, so a drawing prompt i use for myself is to take a random word and literally build a shape with the letters. Then I slowly redraw it while making it more abstract and stretching the shapes. After doing that a long time I've learned to look at a word and preemptively see what kinds of shapes I can make with it. The goal of scrabble is constructing shapes such that they are spelled out words, the playing pieces are little blocks. So going through the dictionary, the alphabetical arrangement already kinda sets your brain up to see patterns. So when you look at the board and you're looking for a word off of a single letter or block, it looks like reading the dictionary. It's definitely impressive to do that in 9 weeks, makes sense why you don't really learn the language. Edit: I did recognize ebouterai from "ebou" because it has a nice shape, I misspelled it though. Ebouteri. Edit2: Scrabble as a perfect information game seems really interesting, then it kinda turns into a game of Go where every move you make is an angle for your opponent to attack, but taking territory looks like Battleship, so the game is all about knowing your opponent and how they think while playing through the construction of words, a complete dissolution of language transformed into perfect communication between players. It's beautiful.

[@raphael122]

I came for the beard of Nigel, I stayed for the memes of Nigel. Truly a incredible video

[@RCJones560]

Just wanted to say, I love your voice! And this was such a well made documentary about Nigel!

[@treier2]

fantastic video, Alex! thank you for making such a high quality script & video in a language that is usually not the norm for your channel. I don't play Scrabble but I've heard various claims of his genius over the years and hearing a good & well-spoken player talk about his feats really illustrates even for someone not that familiar with the game just how rare of a talent Nigel really is. what a wonder that he just happened to start playing this game.

[@darrenfreeman9139]

I know how he does it. He creates trees and then tests his memory of the tree while cycling. For example the letter b tree begins with the trunk as b, that branches to a,e,h,i,l,o,r,u,y - these are the only letters in English that can follow the letter b. They each branch off too. And so on, eventually a tree of all words beginning with the letter b is created. You can use mnemonic devices to memorise the tree, it's not that hard. In game when you look at your letters on scrabble, you take each letter and check to see the possible tree routes until you find the optimal word. With practice this would be quick.

[@AlexDings]

If he does something like this, he either does it unconsciously or he is lying to all of us, because Nigel claims he doesn't use mnemonic devices or any other systematic method like this. But I guess this might be how the information is encoded in his brain on a subconscious level.

[@iwersonsch5131]

I guess one way to improve Quackle might be to make it look at the plays that could be hooked into its top choices - I do that a lot as a Human player, probably way too much

[@Lee-wc4kp]

Great video, I love learning about people who have absolutely mastered their niche.

[@aigoo_]

Just wanted to add that you have a really impressive talent in storytelling and structuring your videos (and perhaps something else I can't really put a word to) that made this an extremely engaging watch. I come from absolutely no interest in scrabble as well as a victim of consuming increasingly shorter videos but this was a thoroughly enjoyable watch (including many pauses to read your green bubble context additions). Thanks for the great video.

[@_milkysoup]

Thank you for making this video about him!! I had never heard or him or competitive Scrabble but this showed up for me because I watched long-form videos about the jigsaw world championship (which I also had no idea was a thing) and it’s so wonderful to see people excelling and finding joy and purpose in such niche things. Very, very cool to learn how different competitive scrabble is from what I’ve played for fun at home and your video was SO good!! So much fun with the pacing and chapters and extra info text bubbles. I also really appreciated the last bit about how he doesn’t want to be “known” by everyone and how it’s not right to try even if it’s possible- but also how you made a point to rule out the assumption that he’s unlikeable.

[@AlexDings]

Conversely, Karen Puzzles has been showing up in my recommendations lately 😀 Haven't watched anything yet but will probably enjoy it 😀

[@NickBosshard]

Never played scrabble in my life and don't really know the rules, besides that you have to make words from letters. But I still managed to follow along and ended up watching the whole video, well done! Also the "Don't judge a walking dictionary by it's cover" line was genius! 😂

[@hoffedemann5370]

What a cute slip-up with "double" and "doppelt" somewhere in the middle, made me grin

[@AfonsodelCB]

glad KZbin sent me here, thank you for the very well constructed video! with the rise of AI, feels like it's only a matter of time until Nigel becomes a mortal, but it's good to see there's still at least 1 human better than machine out there at the moment

[@Headhunter_212]

Great job on the video. Having discovered Nigel on YT, I’m inspired to spend the remainder of my life building and manipulating my mind through further study.

[@TooMuchDad]

Someone needs to show this to Jon Bois, I can't imagine the horror film he could make out of this

[@LiiMuRi]

I have never played Scrabble, but just watched nearly an hour of video on the topic. Great video!

[@RomeDrori]

Fascinating video, I've read that this may be an outcome of a form of autism, there is a man capable of calculating pi in his head, I have a friend capable of telling you EXACTLY how many of anything he has done (eg how many times have you said the word 'the' this week), and I can tell you exactly how a street is laid out and draw a map of a city as long as I've walked through the streets I need to draw at least once.

[@AlexDings]

I considered touching on that in the video, but decided against it because it would be pure speculation. But it does seem likely to me personally. I'm also on the spectrum myself, albeit with no unusual skills. I envy you for that sense of orientation! 😀

[@sydneycardew1923]

I have the dubious honour of being old enough to have played tournament level Scrabble in the 90s as a (very precocious) teen. I can't speak to 1998 precisely, but I dug out my copy of the Chambers OSL (1992 reprint of the 1991 edition) and it only goes up to eight letter anagrams. Somewhere (though for the life of me I can't find it) I must surely have an OSW from about 1996/1997 (around when I started participating in Youth Scrabble) that would be much more definitive, but no compiled list of 10 letter words at that time seems extremely plausible to me.

[@AlexDings]

So that second-hand info on CHLORODYNE seems to have been correct - thanks!