Note: this page was updated on 30th August with results from the Grand Final.
Semi Final
The main round of the Mental Calculations World Championship, hosted by the Mind Sports Olympiad (official website), was held on Sunday 22nd August.
Out of 90 entrants, 32 were qualified to this semi-final, representing India, the UK, Germany, Spain and Bulgaria. The contestants were in a Zoom call, and given 20 seconds to answer each question. Categories included multiplications and divisions, fractions, square roots, cube roots, and other combinations.
Etan (organiser of the MSO) and Daniel Timms (that’s me) were in the Zoom calls with the participants, and it was impressive to see some high standards of performance! Congratulations to everyone who qualified, who did super well just to qualify to this round of the event.
Grand Final
On Monday 30th August, the top 4 contestants from the semi-final competed in a head-to-head elimination round, with the most difficult questions. The event was super competitive, and the results are:
🥇 Aaryan Shukla: gold medal, from correctly solving questions such as:
- Nearest integer: (471 × 86) ÷ (29 × 9)
- Fraction addition: 47/117 + 41/177
- Square root: 248115 (solved to 10 digits of accuracy)
🥈 Mudrika Garg: silver medal, from correctly solving questions such as:
- Multiplication: 45 × 28 × 57 × 80 (in less than 20 seconds!)
- Prime factorization: 14319
- Fraction addition: 5/9 + 3/14 + 2/11
🥉 Abhilakshya Arora: bronze medal, with fastest answers at a 7-digit multiplication and the prime factorization of 104125.
👏 Kaede Kodachi: 4th place, and also achieving the joint-highest score in the semi-final, with 94 points.
Congratulations to all four of the contestants who were all very organized and did their part to make a smooth and fair competition, and showcased an extremely high level of mental calculation in tough conditions, racing against both the clock and each other, and where the question format was kept secret from everyone until the start.
The MSO plans to release a video about the event at a later date.
Semi Final Video Sampler
After the event, I’ve prepared a sample video so that you can go through the questions as if you were actually competing! Grab a pen and paper, and watch the video, which will explain the steps. Then you will have some idea of how you would have done if you were in the actual competition!
These questions are from a fresh set that was not shown during the competition.
Please feel free to send me a message (or comment under the video) with your score. Good luck!
Further Reading
To find out more about competing in mental calculation, check out the following links:
- Information about all international competitions
- Various resources about learning mental calculation
- Article about preparing for the day of a competition
- Advanced calculations methods (including calendar, multiplication, roots and division)
Your next change to compete in the MSO for mental calculations is probably August 2022, and when there are updates from the MC World Cup, Memoriad, and Junior MCWC, you’ll hear from the organizers and I’ll also write an update on this site.
Semi Final Ranking of Scores
| Participant | Score | Ranking |
| Kaede Kodachi | 94 | 1= |
| Mudrika Garg | 94 | 1= |
| Abhilakshya Arora | 92 | 3 |
| Aaryan Shukla | 89 | 4 |
| Aaryan Gupta | 86 | 5 |
| Deepak Nagar | 85 | 6 |
| Kaloyan Geshev | 82 | 7 |
| Kirtan Sirvi | 74 | 8= |
| Mishti Shah | 74 | 8= |
| Jayadithya Shetty | 72 | 10= |
| Parth Garg | 72 | 10= |
| Vandan Nyati | 71 | 12 |
| Kaushal Erande | 67 | 13 |
| Garvita Raj | 64 | 14 |
| Yesha Shah | 63 | 15 |
| Radhika Maheshwari | 58 | 16 |
| Sreenidhi Neermanvi | 57 | 17 |
| Ovi Nikam | 56 | 18 |
| Swanand Bhore | 54 | 19 |
| Andy Robertshaw | 46 | 20= |
| Riddhi Pawar | 46 | 20= |
| Sudhanshu Bhatia | 43 | 22 |
| Kanishk Shah | 40 | 23= |
| Siddhi Jain | 40 | 23= |
| Alberto Rodríguez | 39 | 25 |
| Abhijeet Swarnkar | 37 | 26 |
| Dhwani Patel | 34 | 27 |
| Aanya G | 31 | 28 |
| Aaryan Dalvi | 26 | 29 |
| Saee Manohar Patil | 24 | 30 |
| Quy-Dang Vu | 18 | 31 |
| Devansh Bohra Jain | 16 | 32 |