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Interesting, I wonder if he also memorized all the irregular verb tenses? If so that is a serious feat.

For example, future tense in the 2nd person adds “ás” to the end of the verb. Pensar becomes pensarás. But, there are irregulars. You’d think the verb salir would be salirás (if you were memorizing), but it actually it saldrás

Seems like an incredible feat that goes beyond memorizing a dictionary. Unless Spanish scrabble maybe has specific rules around verb tenses and whatnot?




I don't know about his Spanish Scrabble performance, but when he won the French Scrabble championship, there were players who attempted the French equivalent of "play salirás and see if he notices," and Nigel challenged all of them.


I don't know Spanish scrabble, but I have played Finnish scrabbe - another language that relies heavily on conjugation - and it disallows all conjugated and declined forms of words, except for nominative plurals.


Ah, makes sense :)


Nigel Richards reportedly[1] memorized the full French dictionary over the course of nine weeks (he doesn't speak French either). The way he did this is by reading through the dictionary twice and reciting the words to himself while on bike rides.

He has an incredible mind.

[1] https://youtu.be/T-8NrvVqbT4?si=u797T9o1E-R8TL6J


When Scrabble players talk about a "dictionary" they really just mean a list of words that are acceptable.

They're not actually learning anything other than "_______ is an acceptable string."

So even if just "pensar" is in what you and I would call a "dictionary", the Scrabble-acceptable word list will contain every form of it.




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