MSO 2021 Mental Calculations World Championship Results

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:

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

Leave a Comment