Happy 44 × 46!
We start the new year with news that the Mind Sports Olympiad will once again host their online event this Spring as the Mental Calculations World Championship! 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 events in 2021 (results) and 2023 (results), which had nearly 100 entrants from all around the world.
Registration and Official Information
Official website: Mind Sports Olympiad, which has specific pages for each of the Grand Prix events (updated regularly).
Registration: (Registration is closed because this event already happened.)
Organizers: Etan Ilfeld runs 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 4th 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 an exam of calculation questions (of various difficulties) under time pressure.
Next stage: The 16 participants with the top scores will be invited to the semi-final round. The Grand Finallists from the past two online competitions (2021 and 2023) may qualify automatically, without the qualification round.
Semi Final Round
Date: Saturday 2nd March at 3 pm UK time (on Zoom).
Format: The semi-final will follow the same format as the online events at the MSO and JMC-OC in 2020–2023. 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 how it might be:
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: Saturday 23rd March at at time to be confirmed later (on Zoom)
Format: These absolute world-class competitors will compete in a more intense event, where only the fastest competitors collect the points. This is similar to the final rounds in 2021–2023. 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 Events
Registrations are still open for the GMCA season 1, held online.
A few groups have contacted me with an intention to try the WMC Special Group Multiplication Challenge, but I haven’t received any attempts. There is still time to explore the idea and let me know how you do!
Any announcements for the JMCWC, the Mental Calculation World Cup, Memoriad, or any other advanced mental calculation competitions will also be listed here.