Our guest today is Wenzel Grüß, a 17-year-old Math prodigy from Germany. In the last 2 years he has achieved gold medals in the Junior Mental Calculation World Championship (JMCWC), Mental Calculation World Cup (MCWC) and the MSO World Championship, making him one of the most brilliant and well-known mental calculators of 2020. He has also performed various mind sports on stage in front of live audiences and Russian TV.
How and when did you first get involved in competitive mental calculation?
In 2011 Dr. Gert Mittring, the well-known calculator and founder of the JMCWC, was promoting his book in a local bookshop. Our pharmacist was in the audience and she told my mother that there would be a German championship for children in Münster, a city only 50km away from Bad Iburg, where I lived then. I don’t think I would’ve had a chance to compete had we lived much further away, so those few kilometers were very important for me and my life.
It was the 3rd JMCWC and there were just 2 age categories then – 10-13 years, and 14-17 years. I was only 9 years and 2 months old on the date of competition, so my father had to pretend that I were 1 year older so I could compete! I remember the whole family constantly feared that one of the organizers would find out and suddenly appear shouting “Get out of here, you bloody betrayers!”
Anyway I became 2nd, without any special training and despite wasting ten minutes of precious time just because I stupidly followed my female attendant to the bathroom. So I was very satisfied with my result. I was given a special prize too, because I was the first one in the competition who was able to calculate 3-by-3 multiplications correctly.
In the 2019 MSO your score was more than twice that of the silver medal! How did you train to calculate so fast?
When I competed the first time in 2016 in London I didn’t know what to practise before. I’d heard that the MSO test would be in the style of the JMCWC, but that was all I knew. In 2017 I had the idea to train with an old test and Andy Robertshaw was so kind to send me the 2014 test to help me practise.
Directly after the 2017 test, Dr. Mittring mentioned that he had only had time to do the “simulation” 6-7 times that year. That was the first time I ever heard the word simulation. I contacted George Lane and he sent me the 2018 simulator early in the Summer.
I tried the simulation then every day for one week. It was very helpful, because English is not my mother tongue and I had understood some tasks wrong in the first 2 competitions, which always meant that not only individual tasks but whole categories were wrong! That didn’t happen anymore and so in 2018 I was able to beat Chris Bryant, something which seemed to be completely impossible for me in the years before.
In 2019 I spent several months in Hungary without a printer so I didn’t calculate much. But Dr. Mittring and Chris Bryant don’t compete anymore, Mo El-Mir doesn’t attend the MSO, and Andreas had a headache, so there was nobody there who potentially could be dangerous for me.
Which category of Mental Math do you find most difficult – and why?
I love almost every category – maybe calendar calculation is my least favorite. I know there are some easy methods to become better but I simply haven’t been in the mood yet to train these further. But I have to be better when I want to be in the top 3 again in the World Cup this August.
Calendar calculating is a “classic” task (although I really can’t understand why) and so I have to deal with it. I should be able to get 20-30 more points in this category if I took it more seriously. For me calculating is fun and a joy, my real passion, and if I were a rich boy I would hire a Math teacher whose job it is to feed me with tasks and new ideas.
One of the most impressive things I’ve seen is your performance of “Köpfball” – performing complex calculations such as 87 x 133 x 64 while heading a ball – like below:
What is happening in your brain when you do these calculations?
Thank you for telling me that you find it impressive because besides my Algerian friends and Georgi nobody else congratulated me after I performed this in Wolfsburg! Someone even told me that they didn’t like it because it would make calculation look “ridiculous”. Sorry, I can’t understand this point of view at all – I hoped my performance would encourage some young calculators to start it too! But I don’t know of somebody yet? Children and young people normally love to move their body and I think “Köpfball” combines brain and body perfectly.
My aim is to do 10 consecutive tasks in the style of 123 x 456 x 789 while heading a ball. My tactic is to head the ball as high as possible, I calculate while the ball is in the air. Every 7-8 headers there is a “crisis” the ball don’t jumps straight high anymore and I have to bring it “back in line” to find “peace” to continue calculating. Every 30-40 headers there is a “big crisis”, when I have to react very fast and precise to be able to get the ball in line again.
When I head the ball more than 300 times it’s a matter of good fitness too. Jumping around so very often and always finding the right place for quite a hard ball falling on your head needs a lot of physical power. Just speaking while heading is quite hard to do. But I think the heading got a lot easier for me since I started calculating the same time.
Maybe we can find some time for other calculators to try out Köpfball in one of the competitions later this year? I’d be curious to try it myself although I might need some practice before I can head the ball even 5 times while doing a calculation!
People who are involved with Mental Math realize how impressive your skills are – but how has the reaction been from people in Germany, for example at school?
Almost nobody here is really interested in mental calculation or my skills, so my motivation isn’t very high at all. I think I’d do a lot better if I took calculation more seriously. In school even some Math teachers didn’t know that I was a good calculator, and those who knew weren’t interested at all.
I got excellent grades in Math, but not for my mental math abilities. When I won the silver medal in 2011, at 9 years old, my class teacher refused to congratulate me because in her view it was only a “ridiculous idiot contest”. Although I was already able to calculate on the level of 16-year-olds, my Math teacher gave me the grade 2 (good) not a 1 (very good).
When I returned from Moscow in 2018 after recording the TV show, my headteacher phoned – not to ask know how I did in the show, but to complain that I missed 3 school days! My sport teacher also didn’t want to see me doing “Köpfrechnen”.
My experience in German schools has been very bad, and it makes me laugh when I think that some Russian TV viewers watch me and think that Germans are very interested in Math, when the opposite is true.
So I’m a bit jealous when I hear how well-respected calculation seems to be in countries like Japan, China or India. Here in Germany, there’s only a little respect and no support at all, so I was happy when I left school last year and I’m happy I’ve left Germany this year. After all these years I still have no other person who shows such interest in what I’m doing, except for my father.
What’s your favourite memory from your career so far in mental calculation?
Getting 3rd place in Wolfsburg in 2018 is my personal highlight up to now, along with the “Most Versatile Calculator” gold. I really didn’t expect that in the hours before! Winning the MSO Blitz for the first time in 2016 was great too – especially walking through London with the gold medal around my neck.
The “Incredible People” TV show in Moscow 2018 comes next. If you don’t know that you can perform on stage what you can do at home it’s extremely thrilling to find out. Mental Math is such a complex activity that you need a lot of pure madness to do it in front of an audience. The performance was very risky and I don’t think I will show such a very high calculating level again on stage.
What else do you like to do outside of mental calculation?
Listening to music is my other passion. My father deals with music and has a very open-minded taste, so I’ve listened to every kind of music since I was a baby. Good music in my ears has to have heart and soul, so the wide range goes from Bach and Dylan to Psychic TV and Hüskü Dü to Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers and 1000s more.
We have more than 1000 DVDs with movies and TV series in the house. I know almost every important movie from Psycho to 2001 up to Eraserhead and Dead Man. I’m a very good Jump ‘n’ Run player and love a lot of PC games. Sometimes big puzzles too.
I like to walk and swim and watch animals. I really would like to know what else I could try. If someone has a good tip, don’t hesitate to tell me! Often good luck and a lot of funny coincidences are necessary to find out what you are able to do!
Thanks Wenzel for sharing your experiences in mental calculation! 2020 brings a lot of events and competitions so we look forward to seeing you in action again. If you try Köpfball yourself, or have any tips for Wenzel of new ideas to try, please do share. You can contact him at wenzel@cd3003.de
Il see in Russie in Télévision Wenzel gruss and when I measure his mental abilities to calculate à playing with Ball with his hat I réalise that this Kind of person Who have a strong mind success to go in sidéral space in planèt March.
За съжаление и тук не се обръща внимание на умствените калкулатори.По никакъв начин не се мотивират или стимулират.Но самият Венцел е стимул за моето дете Калоян и се надявам отново да го срещнем на младежкото първенство в Германия 2020!