Let this be a lesson to everyone: if you’re not good at Scrabble, just play Spanish Scrabble.

You’ll be able to beat the Mexicans.

The Guardian:

More than 150 competitors representing 20 countries descended on a hotel on the outskirts of Granada last month to battle it out at the Spanish World Scrabble Championships.

Now, weeks after the letter tiles were meticulously placed and the points tallied, news of the tournament’s winner, Nigel Richards, has made waves across Spain, with many scratching their heads over the fact he does not speak Spanish.

“An incredible humiliation” was how one news presenter described it this week, while another report labelled it “the height of absurdity”.

Oh, yeah. I forgot they speak Spanish in Spain too.

That is humiliating.

Jezz.

But for those who have tracked the rise of Richards, a Malaysia-based New Zealander hailed as the Tiger Woods of Scrabble, the feat seemed fitting.

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

The Spanish title wasn’t the first time Richards’ Scrabble skills had shattered linguistic barriers: in 2015 he made headlines when he won the francophone world championships without being able to speak or understand French. Instead he reportedly memorised the entire French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks.

“He doesn’t speak French at all – he just learned the words,” his friend Liz Fagerlund told the New Zealand Herald at the time. “He won’t know what they mean, wouldn’t be able to carry out a conversation in French, I wouldn’t think.”

That is called “autism.”

In 2018 he again won the francophone tournament, casting off any suggestion that his French title had been a one-off.

After nearly three decades of playing Scrabble competitively, Richards is widely viewed as the best player of all time, with some chalking up his skills to his photographic memory and ability to quickly calculate mathematical probabilities. Intensely private and swift to turn down interviews, very little is known about his personal life.

Again, that’s called “autism.”

If this guy is making $10,000 every tournament, and doing them in every language, he can basically make a pretty decent living off of nothing but Scrabble.

Although, I’m sure he’s making quite a bit of money doing other things as well.

For example, he’s probably also very good at Jenga.

There’s a lot of racism out there, folks.

We gotta call on our brown brothers and sisters to keep say and rest in power.

New York Post:

An Oklahoma high school canceled its homecoming festivities after six white students posed for a disgusting photo spelling out the n-word.

The unidentified Tishomingo High School students put on the troubling display while wearing shirts displaying random Scrabble letters as part of the school’s spirit week, The Oklahoman reported.

The six boys then stood in line to spell out the disturbing racial slur, with some making celebratory hand signals while posing for a pic shared on social media.

This is basically a lynching

The shocking photo represented an “extremely poor decision,” Tishomingo Public Schools superintendent Brandon Moreland wrote in an apology.

“Racism and discrimination, in any form, will never be tolerated or accepted on our campus and is not reflective of the values of our students, school, or community,” Moreland said.

“Our student body and staff include community members from all backgrounds, races, and religions, which is one of many aspects that makes our campus exceptional.”

Tishomingo’s homecoming activities – including a parade and a football game scheduled for Friday – were subsequently canceled due to “safety and security concerns,” the district announced.

“While it is unfortunate that the actions of a few are impacting a longstanding tradition enjoyed by many in our community, discussions with our local law enforcement partners reinforce the district’s decision to cancel, prioritizing the safety of Tishomingo and Antlers students, fans, and participants,” the notice explained.

…

The parents of the involved students were contacted, and the school is taking disciplinary action, Moreland told the public.

“I hope this swift response will underscore our district’s commitment to maintain a campus environment that is inclusive, respectful, and safe for all,” he noted.

It’s unclear why the government thought saying that racism is the most evil thing ever, and constantly punishing white males for being white males, would not lead to a massive backlash of pro-racists.

They probably did foresee that, and just planned on totally destroying people.

It’s about time someone took a step back and asked how the Scrabble dictionary was affecting black people.

White people go around, not even thinking about how their actions hurt others. That’s why so many people hate white people and think they should be slaughtered.

The Times:

The men and women who make up Scrabble’s most dedicated following are rarely short for words. Now they are using their expansive vocabulary to express anger after the game’s owner banned them from playing racial slurs.

Mattel, which owns the rights to the game outside North America, has been accused of pandering to censorious westerners by removing from official lists 400 derogatory terms that it believes have no place in a family game.

Mattel’s current CEO is a Jew

Mattel has refused to publish the list but the official word checker shows that the banned terms include epithets against black, Pakistani and Irish people.

The ruling, which follows a similar move by the American rights owner Hasbro, affects competition-level Scrabble, which is played by thousands of people at international tournaments.

The move has split the community as players rebel. Three prominent members of the World English-Language Scrabble Players Association (Wespa) quit in protest because they felt that playing a word was not insulting in itself.

Darryl Francis, a British author who has helped to oversee official Scrabble word lists since the 1980s, resigned because he said that Mattel had forced the changes upon players.

“Words listed in dictionaries and Scrabble lists are not slurs,” Francis wrote. “They only become slurs when used with a derogatory purpose or intent, or used with a particular tone and in a particular context. Words in our familiar Scrabble word lists should not be removed because of a PR purpose disguised as promoting some kind of social betterment.”

…

Wespa voted in February on whether to keep the words even if this would mean severing links with Mattel and having to remove Scrabble from its name. The motion, which required a three-quarters majority, failed to carry but showed a deep split, with 156 votes to abandon Mattel and 172 to remain.

David Webb, a Scrabble grandmaster, said that the British association felt obliged to remain because “Mattel basically pointed a gun at our head”.

“They said: ‘Accept expurgations or we will withdraw the licence and stop you from using the name Scrabble’,” Webb said.

None of the Scrabble associations from Africa voted to lose the words. Webb said that a decision to ban ethnic slurs had been imposed by middle-class white people.

“Mattel are not responding to any demands or conflicts from within the Scrabble world, which is international, inclusive and friendly. Therefore its actions are seen by many as virtue signalling, making a token gesture or ‘woke’. Imposing American values on the world is pretty obnoxious, and forcing its licensees like Wespa to agree to expurgation or lose their licence is bullying.”

Other banned words include terms used by ethnic minorities for white people. The Jewish words goy and shiksa, which denote non-Jewish people, have also been purged.

It’s about damn time.

I mean it’s 2020 already.

I mean 2021.

It’s the year that it is right now, and it’s not like we’re living in Serbia in 1242 trying to repel an invasion by the Mongols. We have to get rid of these words. We have to purge words out of the dictionary. It’s the damn current year already, get rid of the words.

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

–George Orwell, 1984 (1948)

Man, that seventy-year-old book quote really slices like a hot knife through butter, doesn’t it?

But it’s 2021. We don’t need to be reading books. It’s not 1860! We’re not living in a log cabin where the only light is an oil lamp and so the only thing we can do after dark besides having unprotected sex is read a book! This is 2021! We have Netflix! We don’t need to read books!