In the end, victory came down to a parasitic wasp.

Following three rounds of heated linguistic jousting, Brett Smitheram, 37, a recruitment consultant from East London, was crowned the World Scrabble Champion on Sunday after he drew the letters for the word “braconid.”

That earned him a whopping 176 points as he trounced his rival, Mark Nyman, 3-0, at the World Scrabble Championship 2016 final at the Grand Palais in Lille, France.

Mr. Smitheram, a quarterfinalist in 2014, said he prepared for the competition by reading the dictionary several hours each night and taking stress-reducing endurance runs.

His linguistic prowess, he said, had been buttressed by his efforts to memorize all the seven- and eight-letter words in the dictionary, about 70,000 words. Having a photographic memory also helped, he added, even as he acknowledged that he had not known precisely what braconid meant during the match (he does now).