Saturday

The big day of the competition was even hotter than the day before, but the auditorium on the 19th floor of the ConEdison building (where the US Championships have been held for years and years) was nice and air-conditioned. The building's on Irving Place, just south of Union Square, in a very scenic part of town.

I got there a bit early, with the day's events scheduled to start at 8:30, and there weren't many people there yet. Maurice Stoll was already on the scene though, and greeted me as I came in. I've known Maurice since the World Cup in Weinheim in 2004, he's a German-born American from Texas and very keen to be the US Champion some day. He also competed in the world championship that year, and going into the competition held the national record in the two US championship events that involve actual memory techniques, speed numbers and speed cards. Both these records were set in 2004, when he narrowly lost to Scott Hagwood - in the 2005 championship, a low-scoring competition, he was very disappointed with his performance, attributing it to lack of sleep and too much beer. He was very fired-up about the 2006 event.

Other people I knew arrived in short order - Ram Kolli, who won the 2005 championship and came to the worlds in Oxford, Emmanuel Mercado who competed in the world cup too but had disappeared from memory competitions since then, unable to fit one into his busy schedule, Josh Foer, worried that despite my advice he'd taken something to get him to sleep the night before and pessimistic about his chances, and Scott Hagwood, unbeaten four-times champion who I first met at that most memorable world championship in 2003. Scott wasn't competing this year, he was the 'color commentator' for the TV people covering the event. He's a very good choice for the role - as well as his acknowledged status as the USA's only grandmaster of memory and a multiple former champion, he's big, handsome and just oozes charisma. If you want to convey the message that memory competitions aren't just for geeks, Scott is the best man for the job. He was also promoting his new book - I got a copy autographed with a very flattering message about how great I am.

There were also people there with names I knew well but who I'd never met - Chester Santos, third place in the previous two years, Mykie Pidor, who came to the world championships the year I missed it, in 2001, and whose name is memorable enough for me to remember that fact when I came to actually meet him, Tony Dottino the organiser, who's the American equivalent of Tony Buzan (who normally comes to the US Championship but didn't this year) and Frank Felberbaum, memory trainer, author and coach of several of the young competitors. Frank is particularly famous for entering the world championship one year and doing so spectacularly badly that people have been known to suggest he hasn't the faintest idea about memory techniques, but his students seem to do all right for themselves, and he turns out to be a nice, friendly guy in real life.

And there was a large contingent of people I'd never heard of but had the pleasure of meeting over the course of the day - Marshall Tarley, who doesn't ever seem to get mentioned in writing about the championship but is Tony Dottino's loyal sidekick, Karen and Ed Pinson, who were in charge of the judges (all of whom were very well-organised and knew what they were doing - not something you could say about a few other memory championships in the past) and a whole bunch of other competitors, some old hands at it, some brand-new memory enthusiasts. As is always the case at the US championships, a good number of the 37 participants were high school students, but this year three schools had sent teams - one from the weirdly-named Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania joining the fun along with the two New York-based regular entrants. But a good dozen of the people taking part were just regular American people interested in testing their memory in competition. It's been a long time since Britain managed to produce so many.

Other notable competitors included T Michael Harty, a Lutheran minister, Paul Mellor, professional memory trainer who competed in a suit and tie rather than everyone else's T-shirts and jeans and 12-year-old Christian Kalinowski, whose older brother had competed in previous years but wasn't there this time round because, as Tony Dottino put it, "he has a girlfriend now." When the laughter at this had died down, Tony continued with the explanation that it was her birthday on that day - he wasn't really meaning to imply that only those with no girlfriend would take part in something like this.

The format, as I've mentioned here before, was very different this year. The morning was more familiar-looking, though. People sat at desks, memorising the information put in front of them and recalled it by writing it down, just as normal. But this was qualifying for the afternoon's TV-friendly finals, not the whole competition. First off we had names and faces. It's the first time I've been to a memory competition I wasn't actually competing in, and I was expecting to be bored. But it's actually quite fun to sit in silence for 15 minutes, watching the looks of concentration on everyone's faces. After the recall, it took a long, long time to mark the papers and announce the results, but the organisers insisted on doing that before the second round. The time-filling exercise of having people stand up and talk about why they were taking part was good fun, though, even if it did mean falling about an hour behind schedule after round one.

When the results finally came out, the winner of the discipline was Erin Hope Luley, a seventeen-year-old swimmer and member of the Mechanicsburg High School team. Josh had the second-best score and Maurice the third. Erin has a natural knack for memory, it seems, but no real techniques for things like numbers and cards. This prompts a lot of discussion about the specialists in names and faces, the poem and words, because these people seem to be invariably female - Tatiana Cooley, the multiple American champion of years gone by, was in very much the same mould, and so was Astrid Plessl before she got good at everything else, too. Erin's score of 120 was a new US record, and one that would put you high up the rankings at a world championship too.

But the real tests of memory skill would be the next two disciplines. Speed numbers was first - two attempts of it, and with things being so far behind the timetable already, no announcement of the first trial's results before the second. But Maurice won the event, beating his own record by four extra digits, with 148. Chester was the only other competitor to top 100 (a very low score by world standards - the Americans are still quite a way behind us here), and Paul Mellor had the third-best, with 89, just ahead of Josh.

On to the speed cards. Only a few years ago, it was unheard of for anyone to be able to memorise a whole pack of cards at the US Championships. Things have turned around a bit since then, and times of under two minutes were expected. Watching this one from the sidelines was a lot of fun! Josh stopped his clock at 1:40, and then Chester at around 2:15, and Maurice at 3:15. Josh's recall was all correct, making a new US record again, but Chester's had errors. Maurice was correct, but disgusted with how long it had taken him. Ram, I noticed, had spent the whole five minutes looking at his pack, which would leave him out of contention for the first three qualifying places (which went to the three highest total scores after this round). On the second trial, Josh didn't touch the cards, happy with his first time. Chester did a more cautious 3:04 and got it correct, and Maurice, who had been complaining about being distracted by people moving around him, tried for a faster time but didn't get it.

But he'd still done enough to be top of the table after three events, with Josh and Chester behind him, so those three won the right to skip the poem competition and go straight to the afternoon's finals. I decided to get some lunch with them, rather than watch the final qualifying round, mindful that Nick wanted to film me and seemed determined to make me miss the most exciting bits.

Chester skipped lunch, due either to nerves or needing some last minute-preparation, I don't know. Nobody specifically said that spectators weren't supposed to help themselves to the buffet, so I did, and invited along a couple of other fans I'd just met - one of them was called Jim, but I can't for the life of me remember the woman's name. Nothing personal, if you're reading this! I really am that bad with names. They'd seen Josh's Discover article and decided to come along. Genuine spectators with no connection to the competitors! This is unheard-of at memory competitions!

In the cafeteria we met an enormous English reporter called Giles. I know I describe everyone taller than me as enormous, and I know that most of the world's population fit into that category, but this guy is very, very tall. When he stood next to me to talk later in the day, I had to crick my neck back at an alarming angle just to look up at his face. We talked shop enjoyably for a while, impressing Giles, Jim and friend with tales of memory competitions and techniques in general, until Nick turned up to take me away.

Out in Union Square and Park Avenue, we did some very brief and enjoyable filming in the sun, leaving me with plenty of time to get back to the competition and not miss a thing. This very much put Nick back on my good-people list. I even had time to wander into the Barnes & Noble, where I found a copy of the best book ever written, "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie", by Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrated with genuine genius by Felicia Bond. This masterpiece and its sequels are quite popular in the USA, but for some reason don't seem to have been published in Britain. I discovered them on a previous American trip a few years ago, but had forgotten about them altogether. I bought a copy, to make sure I remembered them in future.

Back at Con Edison, it was time for the televised portion of events. The first three finalists had been joined by Erin (who had set another new US record in the poem), Ram and Paul, and they took their places at the six desks in front of the stage for "Words To Remember". All the afternoon's events had TV-friendly titles, but this was basically just the normal 'random words' event - they were given 15 minutes to remember as much of a list of random words as possible.

But the recall was different - sitting on six chairs on the stage in a random order, they had to take it in turns to name the next word on the list. For the first time, I really wished I was taking part - this looked like fun and I was pretty sure I'd be good at it. When I'm recalling random words, I tend to blank on a whole sequence, so if someone was saying the previous word before me, I'd be just fine up to about 180 words, I think. The first two to make a mistake were eliminated, and the first turned out, surprisingly, to be Erin. About twenty words in, she blanked on the word 'numb'. Shortly after that, Paul confidently announced 'operation', master of ceremonies said "Um, clarification, Ed?", Paul corrected himself "Operate!", but the judge was strict about it. So the round was over, without more than 30 words recalled in total. I thought to myself that this wasn't going to flabbergast TV viewers with the amazing achievements on show. But on the other hand, if it made people think "I can do that!", maybe they'd give it a try and take part next year?

On to the second championship round, and this one was all-new and a lot of fun. Now I really, really wanted to be up there - I genuinely wanted to test my abilities against the others on this one, and wasn't sure how well I'd do. It was called "Tea Party - 3 Strikes, You're Out". One at a time, five people came onto the stage and chatted about themselves, listing their name, date of birth, home town and zip code, work phone number, pet's name, species and colour, three hobbies, favourite car's colour, year and make, and three favourite foods. The memorisers had this information on pieces of paper in front of them, and had the choice of studying this paper of listening to and watching the person. Then they had 7.5 minutes of silently studying the paper. Then the four of them came back up on stage to recall, as the 'party guests' came back in a random order and had to be told their information one at a time. As the title suggested, you were allowed two mistakes, but the third put you out of the competition.

The guys struggled with it. Maurice especially, who had been practicing with photos on top of the printed page of information, found that his preparation wasn't as helpful as he'd thought. Josh, who still struggles with memorising numbers, had decided to ignore the difficult phone numbers and trust to luck that he wouldn't get asked too many of them. The first phone number to come up, in fact, stumped Chester, Maurice and Josh in turn, but Ram got it. Ram was in fact the star of this round - while the others built up multiple strikes with little details on the first guest, he sailed through with ease. When we went onto the second guest, Maurice got his third strike on her birthday and was eliminated. It worked out so that again Chester was the first one to be asked her work phone number. "Oh man, why do I always get the work numbers?! That's the hardest part!" He scribbled on his pad for a moment and confidently announced "148..." "No, it starts 323," said Tony. Chester, who had memorised all the numbers in a long string, had forgotten to cross off the zip code that Ram had just said, but he'd got the phone number written down perfectly after it. But that was his third and final strike, and Josh, who wouldn't have had a clue about the number, thanked his lucky stars. He and Ram were through to the final and Chester had to be consent with a third consecutive third place in the US Championship.

Again, we'd only recalled one-and-a-bit of the five guests' information. But it was compelling viewing! I went up to Josh in the few minutes' break before the grand final and assured him that he'd got it in the bag now, Ram wasn't much good with the cards. He raged at me for saying something like that - I was trying to improve his mental attitude, but he saw it more as bringing down some seriously bad karma. I apologised and wished him luck, and did the same for Ram. Nick had reappeared to film me watching the last bit of the competition, and positioned me at the front of the spectators, rather than at the back where I'd been hanging out with Michael Harty, Aaron O'Brien, James Jorasch and other competitors.

The final competition started - "Double Deck'r Bust". They had five minutes to memorise two packs of cards, and then they would recall them, taking it in turns to say one card at a time (order to be decided by the toss of a coin). In a last minute clarification of the rules, Josh was alarmed to be told they had to memorise the pack from the top card down - he memorises from the bottom up. When the memorising time started, he turned the pack over a couple of times, racked with indecision, before memorising it bottom-up in his usual way and deciding to reverse the order in the recall. I had a tap on my shoulder - Nick, positioning himself where he could get me, Josh and Ram in shot, was getting in the way of the real camera crew and they wanted him moved. I tried to convey this to him with gestures, without success, and had to tiptoe over to him and drag him away. He came and sat next to me, right behind the memorisers, and asked me to whisper to him what was going on. I tried to do so as quietly as possible, until Tony Dottino waved to me to shut up. I hate people who whisper during memorisation, I don't know what I was thinking.

Anyway, the memorisation came to an end and the two of them went back onstage for the final time. At the all-important coin toss, Ram called tails and it came down heads. Josh thus got to choose who would name the first card. It took a long time and a lot of very visible mental cogitation, before he said "I will. No, wait! He can." It turned out later that he'd realised he couldn't remember the last card in the pack, and wanted to arrange it so that Ram would have to say it. Then at the last moment, he realised he didn't know the first card either, so changed his mind hastily.

They got about twelve cards into the deck before Ram couldn't remember one. A little anticlimactic, but Josh was the new US Memory Champion! With the pressure off, Tony invited him to try to recall the rest of the pack, which he reluctantly did. It was very entertaining for the crowd - at one point he got going so quickly that Tony couldn't keep up with turning the cards over, and a couple of times Ram helped him out when he got stuck, but they got through the whole first pack in some style. It did make good TV, I'm sure.

And with that, it was just time for the prizegiving, some more general chit-chat with the competitors and the dinner in a Chinese restaurant over the road. To which I also came along, still not sure whether I was technically invited, but nobody seemed to mind. I should say that I was very conscious all day that I didn't want to say or do anything that looked like showing-off - I had come there at least partly because I knew everyone there would think I'm great and tell me so at length, and I would have hated anyone to realise that, and think "look at him, thinking he's so great because he was the world memory champion and we're all a bunch of schmoes." Americans, as I understand it, say 'schmoes'. Actually, nobody gave me the slightest hint that they thought this, so maybe I was just paranoid, but as I say, I was very careful to play down any achievements of my own when someone else mentioned them, and never to mention them myself. But everyone there told me I should write a book, that they'd buy it if I did, and I really should try to make a living out of it.

At dinner, James Jorasch expounded at length on the many ways in which I could help him make millions or maybe billions of dollars from various schemes involving basically being paid for being clever. He seems to be a multipurpose businessman, who's involved in practically everything. In the other ear, Aaron O'Brien was regaling me with his unusual theories about memorising pi, which I was doing my best to explain just wouldn't work, but couldn't put my finger on exactly what was wrong with them. I should introduce him to Mike Curtis, whose theories make my head spin round in exactly the same way - their minds are obviously on the same wavelength. All in all, it was a very enjoyable meal, although the food was pretty unpleasant. I said my goodbyes and congratulations to everyone, agreed to let James film me memorising cards for some website - either the US Championship one or his own one, whoever wanted it - the next morning, and went back to the hotel. It was still hot outside, even late-ish at night.