The Old Masters

 The road to the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2025 kicked off last Thursday, with the first of nine monthly competitions. It's fair to say I didn't set the world on fire with my performance, but it really was the kind of puzzle I struggle with more than most, so I'm still hopeful of getting a better result than 93rd place in future months...

And qualifying might be easier this year than previously - this time round, since so many more people are trying to qualify for the main event, it's been expanded from 128 to 256 people in the finals of the World Championship! And ninety of these come from the monthly events - each month, the top performer of the four live-streamed competitors, the top seven of the non-streamed players, the top under-25 and the top 'Master' qualify. Top of the ones who haven't qualified in a previous month, that is, so I'm hopeful that by the time we get to September, if I have a good day, I might scrape in and not have to go through the big open qualification round to fill the remaining spots.

But let's talk about that 'Masters' category. That's the tactful way to describe competitors aged 50 and over. People who are too old to know about computers and so need a little extra support. Poor things. Now, as I've said many times before with reference to memory competitions, I don't like to see special age categories, or any other kind of categories, in mental sports. The whole appeal of these things is that everyone can compete in them on equal terms, be they an old fogey of fifty or an annoyingly precocious two-year-old!

But I don't say that too forcefully, since it just makes me sound resentful about being in the default category that's assumed to be best at these things. And the thing about the "over 50" category in the Excel championship is that they go by year of birth. So anyone born in 1975 is a 'Master' and has a slightly better chance of securing qualification to the main draw.

I was born in 1976. If they keep these rules for next year's competition... I'll be officially an old man. A doddering old fool who remembers the days before Excel. And needs to be given a little extra advantage to compensate for it. I'm not sure I approve of this, but I'll take it, gladly! Thank you very much!

And in all fairness, I didn't use Excel until 1996. And the version of Excel that existed in those days was pretty hopeless. And the people in our office didn't even have a computer each! Most of the accounts work was quite genuinely done with pencil and paper! Tell that to young people today and they won't believe you. AND we had to pay t'mill owner to let us work there!

On a related note, this is actually one of the reasons why I always like to read Tom Brevoort's blog every weekend. He writes quite brilliant analysis of old comics, but I always feel like I'm slightly too young to be part of that crowd. The blog is definitely written to appeal to people who were teenagers in the seventies, and Tom and most of the blog's regular commentators fit into that age group. I'm like a younger kid trying to hang out with the cooler big boys if I join in with the discussion there. And believe me, when you're a year away from being an antiquated 'Master' in Excel Esports world, that's actually a very nice thing to feel!