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I have heard the following line in the TV series "Vis a Vis", which takes place in Spain:
Fue más lista que la policía, más lista que los perros, más lista que los inspectores, más lista que nadie.
Does "más lista que nadie" mean "más lista que todos"? Is it usual in both Spain and Latin America?
Yes, there's no logic to it but “más X que nadie” means the same as “más X que todos”, for any value of adjective X. If there's a difference, it's very subtle.
The principle is valid also for nunca: “Me siento mejor que nunca” = “Me siento mejor que en todo otro momento; nunca (antes) me había sentido mejor”.
I'd say this is ground-level Spanish, so to speak, i.e. something shared by all dialects.
Short answer: yes, it means the same.
"Más (adjective) que nadie" implies, using a negative form that sounds strange to English speakers, that nobody is as (adj) as that person.
Yes, in many languages, there´s not such a thing as a double negation. It just doesn´t make sense. However in Spanish it´s used here and there and you stumbled upon one of those.
If you take the sentence and translate it word by word to English it would mean that everyone else is smarter than she is but the actual meaning is just the opposite.
The same double negation "paradox" applies to other sentences like:
which could be understood by an English as a convoluted way of saying that you actually have something.
It´s also worth noting that the simple negation equivalent would make no sense to a native speaker. Saying something like:
make little sense and may lead to one or two confused faces.
