Is Nigel Richards, world's best Scrabble player, autistic?

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redrobin62
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18 Aug 2015, 11:39 am

Here is a link about him. http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-time ... with-words
I only just started reading up on Nigel Richards lately. Without a doubt he is the best Scrabble player in the world, winning tournament after tournament and winning hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. Some of the things I've learned about him:
Lives alone.
Rarely socializes.
Wears the same oversized glasses and types of clothes year in, year out.
Is vegetarian.
Has two special interests - Scrabble and bike riding.
Is reclusive.
Has eidetic memory.
Is single.
Is awkward,



Fnord
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18 Aug 2015, 1:05 pm

How the  hell  heck should we know?

Why don't you ask him, instead?

:roll:



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18 Aug 2015, 1:10 pm

He could be... but we certainly aren't qualified to know or even make a guess, especially because we haven't met him. He's quite a character, though.


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B19
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18 Aug 2015, 11:21 pm

I would certainly think that he is on the spectrum.

His ability is outstanding - he won the French national scrabble championship recently, despite the fact that he has never even learned to speak or write French.. as preparation, he simply memorized French dictionaries. I've seen him and my impression was that he is a HFA with savant abilities for words coupled with the characteristic extraordinary memory and recall which is quite typical of the savant HFAs... probably also very visual thinker too I would guess, which fits in with this particular sub-group pattern of HFA.



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19 Aug 2015, 12:14 am

Hey B19! Nice to see you back in action! :mrgreen:

Interesting observations about the savant HFA pattern.



B19
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19 Aug 2015, 3:57 am

Hello to you Adamantium! Always good to hear from you!

A little more on Nigel Richards: he won a scholarship to university here, though he declined to take it up and got a job at the post office instead..and he learned the entirety of the French dictionary in nine weeks.. he is known for his unemotional response to things (except perhaps being pestered for interviews)