The Mental Calculations World Championship is an important component of the Mind Sports Olympiad, held every August in London, and online during February/March. The Mind Sports Olympiad is a large event with many competitions in board games and cerebral pursuits such as:
- Board games, including chess, Scrabble, backgammon, go and Settlers of Catan
- Competitive Memory and Speed Reading
- Diving Chess!
Format Details
From 1998–2019, all participants in this Mental Math Competition sat the same written exam paper in London, taking over 3 hours. Questions were generated mainly by George Lane’s Pegasus software. The papers are designed to be long enough that nobody will finish everything—although some participants do get close!
Since 2020, a different competition has taken place online. This allows the best participants around the world a convenient opportunity to compete at the highest level, although the format is consequently very different to the “traditional” competition. Since 2021, this has included independent proctors on site during the final round, in order to ensure fair competition.
All major calculation categories are included, such as:
- addition, subtraction, multiplication and division
- exact division
- irrational and exact square roots, cube roots and deeper roots
- factorizations
- fractions
- calendar dates
- surprises
The following is a sample of the online competition:
Further Information
More information about this can be found on the official website of the Mind Sports Olympiad. Upcoming competitions are announced here (subscribe for email updates about all competitions) and of course on the official website.