It is now confirmed that the Mind Sports Olympiad will once again host an online event as the Mental Calculations World Championship in the next few weeks! This will be a part of their Grand Prix, which includes over 100 tournaments in various games and mind sports.
The format will be similar to the online event in 2021, which had 90 entrants from all around the world.
Registration and Official Information
Official website: Mind Sports Olympiad, which has a specific page regarding the Mental Calculations event.
Registration: Fill in the simple form on the official website before Thursday 9th February.
Organizers: Etan Ilfeld is running the Mind Sports Olympiad, and is the contact for any queries. I’ll (Daniel Timms) be helping with some aspects of the event, such as technology and questions, to enable this to be an enjoyable event for all participants.
Qualification Round
Date: Sunday 12th Feburary at 3 pm UK time (10 am New York, 4 pm Germany, 8.30 pm India) (on Zoom).
Format: Competitors will join a Zoom call, and complete two short sets of questions under time pressure:
- The first set contains only simple operations, such as subtraction, multiplication, divisions, rounding, fractions and decimals. It should be accessible to everyone even without prior training.
- The second set contains the more complex calculations, including square roots, cube roots, calendar dates, prime factors, etc.
Next stage: The top scores will be invited to the semi-final round.
Semi Final Round
Date: Sunday 26th February at 3pm UK time (on Zoom).
Format: The semi-final will follow the same format as the online events at the MSO and JMC-OC in 2020–2021. Each question will be presented on the screen, and participants have 20 seconds to type the answer correctly. The video below is a real-time simulator of this:
Next stage: The top 4 competitors will be invited to the grand final. To avoid any unexplained behaviour such as in 2020, the MSO team has also introduced additional measures to ensure a fair competition.
Grand Final
Date: Monday 6th March at 3pm UK time (on Zoom)
Format: The top 4 competitors will compete in a more intense event, where only the fastest competitors collect the points. This is similar to the final rounds in 2021 and 2022. Fuller instructions will be provided to the participants.
Preparation
The questions for each semi-final will be the same categories, difficulty and scores as these in the MSO 2021 Sample Questions.
If you’re interested in competing, you can do the following:
- Warm up for competing by training your calculation skills!
- Subscribe to updates from the MSO (on their website) and/or World Mental Calculation (see below)
Good luck to everyone competing around the world—hope to see you soon!
Other Future Competitions
The Junior Mental Calculation World Championship 2023 will be announced shortly—but you can already register your interest with Caroline Merkel on the official JMCWC website.
Any announcements for the Mental Calculation World Cup, Memoriad, or any other advanced mental calculation competitions will also be listed here.