Grammar Girl here.

Hi, it's Minion Fuggedy, and today I have the second part of my visit to the North

American Scrabble Championships.

If you missed part 1, it's Grammar Girl Episode 477 from August 13th, so you can find it

at iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts.

But this week, the co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association,

Nespa, John Chu, is going to tell us how people win Scrabble tournaments when they don't

even speak the language.

What some of the tricks are that Scrabble Masters use to memorize words.

How Scrabble is played differently in other countries and why it would be extra cool to

go to Thailand to play.

What one thing you should focus on if you want to be a better player and finally, how you

can compete in the national championship.

It's not as hard as you may think, but it requires a lot of mental focus.

And now on to all the fascinating things I learned at the Scrabble Championships.

There was a lot of buzz at the championships because a rock star player named Nigel Richards

and English speaker had just won the French World Championship after studying the French

word list for just a few months.

But it's actually not a new thing for people to play Scrabble in foreign languages.

John Chu.

But it's not the first time that anybody's done this.

I believe a Frenchman has won the Spanish World Championship before.

...