The first mental calculation competition of the year 45² is now confirmed: 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 (see below) will be similar to the online events in 2021 (results) and 2023 (results) and 2024 (results), which each had nearly 100 entrants from all around the world.
Although the competition is open to all ages and mostly tough calculation tasks, all of the recent finallists have been young (aged 11–19). Who will be the most successful person from the 1900s this year?
Registration and Official Information
Official website: Mind Sports Olympiad, which has specific pages for each of the Grand Prix events (updated regularly).
Registration: will be open soon on the Mind Sports Olympiad website soon.
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 26th January at 13:30 UK time (08:30 New York, 14:30 Germany, 19:00 India, 22:30 Japan) (on Zoom).
Format: Competitors will join a Zoom call, and complete an exam of calculation questions (of various difficulties and in the same categories as later rounds) under time pressure. There may be some changes to this format compared to the previous events.
Next stage: The 15 participants with the top scores will be invited to the semi-final round. Additionally, the Grand Finallists from the most recent online competitions (2021–2024) may qualify automatically, without the qualification round.
Semi Final Round
Date: Saturday 22nd February at 13:30 UK time (on Zoom).
Format: The semi-final will follow the same format as the online events at the MSO in 2020–2024. Each question will be presented on the screen, and participants have 20 seconds to type the answer correctly. As in 2021 onwards, the MSO team will take additional measures to ensure a fair competition. 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. If in the semi-final, some participants beneath 4th place have scores very close to the top 4, we will also try to accommodate them in the Grand Final. For example, in the 2024 event, 7 competitors advanced to the final.
Grand Final
Date: to be confirmed with the top 4 competitors from the semi-final.
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 2021–2024. 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
The JMCWC will be held on 04–06 October 2025. Season 2 of the GMCA League is underway. Announcements for the JMCWC and other international events will be posted here, and sent to the newsletter and posted on the FB page.