My Blogger stats page tells me I've had a lot of pageviews from Poland lately, so I just want to say a big hello, Pole or Poles who've been reading!
It's a bit like the North Pole here today, or at least the way I understand the North Pole to be. There's about an inch of snow out there, and nasty icy remains of the previous snow still underneath it. Good job I hoarded lots of food before it started, because I'm really no good at walking in that kind of stuff.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Earth-2
Just a quick primer for those not quite as obsessive about superheroes as I am: Superhero comics were huge in America in the 1940s, nearly died out through lack of interest in the 1950s, then sprang back to life at the end of the fifties when DC Comics launched all-new superheroes named after their Golden Age counterparts, the Flash and the Green Lantern, who had the same basic superpowers but were otherwise entirely different characters.
Soon enough, the DC Universe of superhero comics revealed that the characters from the thirties and forties actually lived on an alternate world, Earth-2, and were still going strong, if a little grey around the temples. The two worlds used to regularly interact in the pages of 1960s comics.
This posed an interesting question for comics fans - Superman and Batman had remained popular enough to be continually in print during the dark days of the fifties, and yet now their comics were depicting the adventures of the Earth-1 versions of the heroes. So, exactly at what point did the comics switch from chronicling Earth-2 to chronicling Earth-1?
I only mention this because, if you're not as obsessive about the Beano as I am, you might not have noticed that the fathers of the central characters have had a makeover recently. The core Beano characters first appeared in the early fifties (the same time that American superheroes were disappearing, funnily enough), and their dads were traditionally bald, grey-haired and decidedly elderly-looking. Perhaps men didn't have children until they were sixty back then, I don't know. But now, in line with parenting habits of the 21st century, Mr The Menace, Mr The Minx and Mr The Dodger have all become much more youthful, with full heads of hair and not a moustache or a wrinkle to be seen on their faces.
The really fun part is in a Dennis The Menace story on the shelves now, when he looks through old photos with his granny, and sees that his dad was exactly like him as a boy (except that his jumper was black and red instead of red and black), AND that his dad's dad looked exactly like the old character model for Dennis's Dad! And even more, that his granddad was also identical to Dennis, during the war! It's fun stuff for the old-time fans. I want to see more adventures of Earth-2 Dennis.
The Bash Street Kids did the same thing many years ago, incidentally - their teacher was called Mr Brown in the fifties, before sliding into just being called Teacher, and then a story in the seventies or eighties revealed that the Kids' parents were all former pupils, and that their teacher was Mr Brown - who made an appearance, aged somewhat but looking like he used to in the olden days. And another Bash Street Kids story around the same time revealed that they all have younger siblings who look exactly like them, just smaller... you could have a lot of fun working out which generation of Beano characters you're reading about at any given time!
The writer deserves praise, whoever it was. Nigel Parkinson was the artist, and he always deserves praise anyway, so unless I hear otherwise I'm going to credit him with all the cleverness.
Soon enough, the DC Universe of superhero comics revealed that the characters from the thirties and forties actually lived on an alternate world, Earth-2, and were still going strong, if a little grey around the temples. The two worlds used to regularly interact in the pages of 1960s comics.
This posed an interesting question for comics fans - Superman and Batman had remained popular enough to be continually in print during the dark days of the fifties, and yet now their comics were depicting the adventures of the Earth-1 versions of the heroes. So, exactly at what point did the comics switch from chronicling Earth-2 to chronicling Earth-1?
I only mention this because, if you're not as obsessive about the Beano as I am, you might not have noticed that the fathers of the central characters have had a makeover recently. The core Beano characters first appeared in the early fifties (the same time that American superheroes were disappearing, funnily enough), and their dads were traditionally bald, grey-haired and decidedly elderly-looking. Perhaps men didn't have children until they were sixty back then, I don't know. But now, in line with parenting habits of the 21st century, Mr The Menace, Mr The Minx and Mr The Dodger have all become much more youthful, with full heads of hair and not a moustache or a wrinkle to be seen on their faces.
The really fun part is in a Dennis The Menace story on the shelves now, when he looks through old photos with his granny, and sees that his dad was exactly like him as a boy (except that his jumper was black and red instead of red and black), AND that his dad's dad looked exactly like the old character model for Dennis's Dad! And even more, that his granddad was also identical to Dennis, during the war! It's fun stuff for the old-time fans. I want to see more adventures of Earth-2 Dennis.
The Bash Street Kids did the same thing many years ago, incidentally - their teacher was called Mr Brown in the fifties, before sliding into just being called Teacher, and then a story in the seventies or eighties revealed that the Kids' parents were all former pupils, and that their teacher was Mr Brown - who made an appearance, aged somewhat but looking like he used to in the olden days. And another Bash Street Kids story around the same time revealed that they all have younger siblings who look exactly like them, just smaller... you could have a lot of fun working out which generation of Beano characters you're reading about at any given time!
The writer deserves praise, whoever it was. Nigel Parkinson was the artist, and he always deserves praise anyway, so unless I hear otherwise I'm going to credit him with all the cleverness.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Other memory competitions are available
Having publicised the Friendly Memory Championship, I feel I should tell you all about the other memory competitions coming up in the next few months.
USA Memory Championship - Saturday March 16, Con Edison building, New York
Only open to US citizens, and apparently only to people over 12 years old too - the usual fun format with an exciting finale on stage in front of the audience. This will be the 16th US championship!
Italian Memory Championship - Friday/Saturday March 22/23, Italy?
I don't know much about this one, if it's still happening. Anyone got the details?
Welsh Memory Championship - Saturday March 30, Llanover, Wales
The fifth Welsh Open - anyone can take part, you don't have to be Welsh. Exactly the same format as the Friendly/Cambridge competition - let Dai know if you're coming, on the Facebook page or with an email.
North German Championship - Saturday April 13, Magdeburg, Germany
Only open to people from the north of Germany, a Regional Standard competition, which means exactly the same as Wales, but without the 15-minute numbers, 10-minute cards or spoken numbers.
South German Championship - Friday/Saturday April 29/30 - Karlsruhe, Germany
Saturday is exactly the same as the North German Championship, but only open to people from the South. However, people from everywhere else can compete on the Friday, with those extra three disciplines, and Saturday both, making it a National Standard, Open championship.
If you believe in long-range planning, there'll be the bigger championships in the summer - Germany in July, UK in August, probably - then Sweden in September, Hong Kong and Australia both planned for that kind of timeframe too, and no doubt a World Championship somewhere, somewhen, later on in the year!
USA Memory Championship - Saturday March 16, Con Edison building, New York
Only open to US citizens, and apparently only to people over 12 years old too - the usual fun format with an exciting finale on stage in front of the audience. This will be the 16th US championship!
Italian Memory Championship - Friday/Saturday March 22/23, Italy?
I don't know much about this one, if it's still happening. Anyone got the details?
Welsh Memory Championship - Saturday March 30, Llanover, Wales
The fifth Welsh Open - anyone can take part, you don't have to be Welsh. Exactly the same format as the Friendly/Cambridge competition - let Dai know if you're coming, on the Facebook page or with an email.
North German Championship - Saturday April 13, Magdeburg, Germany
Only open to people from the north of Germany, a Regional Standard competition, which means exactly the same as Wales, but without the 15-minute numbers, 10-minute cards or spoken numbers.
South German Championship - Friday/Saturday April 29/30 - Karlsruhe, Germany
Saturday is exactly the same as the North German Championship, but only open to people from the South. However, people from everywhere else can compete on the Friday, with those extra three disciplines, and Saturday both, making it a National Standard, Open championship.
If you believe in long-range planning, there'll be the bigger championships in the summer - Germany in July, UK in August, probably - then Sweden in September, Hong Kong and Australia both planned for that kind of timeframe too, and no doubt a World Championship somewhere, somewhen, later on in the year!
Monday, January 14, 2013
Memory Lane Again
The combination of snow here this morning and the squirrel calendar I got for Christmas got me in reminiscent mood about the Austrian Memory Championship 2004. January's picture is a red squirrel in the snow, you see, and the Austrian championship that year gave me the most amazingly pretty scenic view I've ever had from any hotel window before or since - it looked out on a grassy garden leading down to a little group of trees further away, there was a light coat of snow, and a whole lot of red squirrels skipping around and apparently just having fun in the winter weather.
The Austrian Open is a much-missed part of the memory calendar. If you're new to memory competitions (or just have a bad memory), you might not think of Austria as having been a major player, but back in 2004 it certainly was. We'd just had a World Championship with four Austrians in the top ten and two in the top three, and all the talk was about Austria, rather than Germany, being the country poised to put an end to Britain's monopoly on the World Memory Champion title.
The 'buzz' (ie a single brief article on the internet somewhere) about the Austrian championship in November was that it would be a rematch between me and Astrid Plessl after our heroic tussle at the WMC in August, but since I hadn't done any training since then, and neither had Astrid, apparently, it was a bit of a disappointment on that front.
There were in fact two competitions taking place simultaneously in Vienna - an adult and a junior competition. Joachim Thaler, third place in the WMC that year, had reluctantly decided to compete in the latter, which had better prize money and a pretty much guaranteed first place for him, rather than testing himself against the grown-ups - can't really blame him for that, since he did need the money, but it was a shame to lose one of the top contenders.
The scores of the junior championship, for some reason, aren't on either Memocamp or World Memory Statistics - I can only assume we couldn't find them when we were putting the latter website together, but they are in fact still available on the ancient Austrian Championship website, which is still up there on the internet after all these years! Click here for Junior results and Click here for adults - both are pdfs.
My memories of the competition itself aren't actually very clear at all, compared to a lot of competitions. I suspect this had something to do with the beer available to competitors afterwards (possibly it was free, or someone bought it for me, I honestly don't recall), and the presence of Ed Cooke and Lukas Amsüss and their memory-themed challenges. I remember at one point announcing that I'd memorise multiple packs of cards, a long number and drink a pint of beer, all in the space of five minutes. I didn't succeed.
The Junior championship pulled in seventeen young Austrian memorisers from all over the country - Joachim basically took everyone else to the cleaners, but the runner-up was Corinna Draschl, who also did well and is still involved in memory competitions to this day! In fact, the two of them were first and second respectively in almost every discipline.
The Austrian Open, meanwhile, attracted eleven competitors in a very international field. Just the two non-junior Austrians, in Astrid and Lukas, but five Germans - Florian Dellé, Boris Konrad, Ferdinand Krause, Clemens Mayer and Martina Mayer-Lauingen - myself and Ed from England, Idriz Zogaj from Sweden and Trevor Nell all the way from South Africa! That included five of the top ten from the recent world championship, and I'm pretty sure Luise Sommer (10th in the WMC) was there too, but helping to organise the junior competition instead of competing.
We started with the Poem, that much-missed memory discipline that was a lot of fun but admittedly impossible to organize fairly in multiple languages. I had previously been the world's best at that, but Astrid by 2004 was widely acknowldeged as being much, much better than me, so it was a pleasant surprise when she produced a bad score this time and I ended up winning. Lukas missed the first discipline, having overslept - maybe Astrid had a late night too?
In five-minute binary, I broke the world record - in fact, it was announced that I'd got a world-beating score of 810, and I had to hassle Hubert Krenn into going back and checking it, because I knew I'd only written down 780 digits. They were all right, though, and 780 was still considered exceptional, way back then.
Names and faces was won comfortably by Clemens, who'd come fourth in the WMC and seemed seriously committed to doing better in the future - legend has it that he'd been corresponding with Gunther Karsten back in 2003, and said he wasn't ready to enter real competitions, because his scores in practice weren't good enough. Gunther pointed out that the scores he said he'd got were better than almost anyone in the world had achieved before, and that he really should think about actually competing, and the rest is history...
30-minute numbers (this was a strangely non-standard-format competition, half-way between a National Standard and International Standard - regulations were a bit looser back then) was also won by Clemens, with a fairly mind-blowing 1000; I came fourth and was realising that my concentration wasn't what it should have been.
I then totally made a mess of ten-minute cards, only getting one pack right, and then speed numbers, where I got just 163, and with Clemens winning both of those too, I had to admit that I wasn't going to add "Austrian Open Champion" to my list of achievements. This was followed by another terrible performance in 15-minute words, which Astrid won handily - that was another of her specialities. Boris was second, in the discipline he'd soon come to rule the world in.
Clemens also won historic dates, which I was supposed to be far and away the world's best at (at the world championship that year I flabbergasted everyone with an enormous score of 80 - those were the days), following which we had a rather eccentric version of spoken numbers.
Most memory competitions, when asked to provide 100 digits spoken at a rate of one per second, make some kind of recording. This competition had a man reading the numbers from a sheet of paper, while another man looked at his watch and waved his finger once a second to show the other when to speak. I don't remember it being a huge disaster, but nobody got a score higher than 60 in either of the two trials.
Finally we came to speed cards, and Lukas, a real speed cards specialist, did a pack in 35.62 seconds. I think he was one of only four people who had ever broken the 40-seconds barrier at that point - the number four sounds right to me, anyway, though I'm racking my brain and can't think who the other one would have been apart from Lukas, me and Andi Bell. Anyone? Anyway, I was well and truly brain-drained by that point and didn't manage to get a pack correct.
That left Clemens the overall winner by some distance, followed by Astrid, Ed, Boris and me. Lukas was a tiny 35 championship points further adrift in sixth, which means I only just scraped into the prize money places - I took €100 home with me, which only barely made me feel better about losing to Ed and Boris just three months after I'd beaten them by miles in the world championship. But that's what happens when you don't practice - after winning the WMC, my motivation dropped off completely, and it was nearly a whole year before I even picked up a pack of cards at home again!
For Clemens, this was the start of seven consecutive memory competition wins, an unbeaten streak that ran right through 2005 and 2006. For Astrid it was the last competition she entered, although she never properly 'retired' and kept talking about coming back for years thereafter. She was much missed, as was the Austrian Memory Championship - 2004 was the last one, and that burgeoning Austrian dominance of memory sports just sort of fizzled out. It's a shame. I want to go back there and see the squirrels!
The Austrian Open is a much-missed part of the memory calendar. If you're new to memory competitions (or just have a bad memory), you might not think of Austria as having been a major player, but back in 2004 it certainly was. We'd just had a World Championship with four Austrians in the top ten and two in the top three, and all the talk was about Austria, rather than Germany, being the country poised to put an end to Britain's monopoly on the World Memory Champion title.
The 'buzz' (ie a single brief article on the internet somewhere) about the Austrian championship in November was that it would be a rematch between me and Astrid Plessl after our heroic tussle at the WMC in August, but since I hadn't done any training since then, and neither had Astrid, apparently, it was a bit of a disappointment on that front.
There were in fact two competitions taking place simultaneously in Vienna - an adult and a junior competition. Joachim Thaler, third place in the WMC that year, had reluctantly decided to compete in the latter, which had better prize money and a pretty much guaranteed first place for him, rather than testing himself against the grown-ups - can't really blame him for that, since he did need the money, but it was a shame to lose one of the top contenders.
The scores of the junior championship, for some reason, aren't on either Memocamp or World Memory Statistics - I can only assume we couldn't find them when we were putting the latter website together, but they are in fact still available on the ancient Austrian Championship website, which is still up there on the internet after all these years! Click here for Junior results and Click here for adults - both are pdfs.
My memories of the competition itself aren't actually very clear at all, compared to a lot of competitions. I suspect this had something to do with the beer available to competitors afterwards (possibly it was free, or someone bought it for me, I honestly don't recall), and the presence of Ed Cooke and Lukas Amsüss and their memory-themed challenges. I remember at one point announcing that I'd memorise multiple packs of cards, a long number and drink a pint of beer, all in the space of five minutes. I didn't succeed.
The Junior championship pulled in seventeen young Austrian memorisers from all over the country - Joachim basically took everyone else to the cleaners, but the runner-up was Corinna Draschl, who also did well and is still involved in memory competitions to this day! In fact, the two of them were first and second respectively in almost every discipline.
The Austrian Open, meanwhile, attracted eleven competitors in a very international field. Just the two non-junior Austrians, in Astrid and Lukas, but five Germans - Florian Dellé, Boris Konrad, Ferdinand Krause, Clemens Mayer and Martina Mayer-Lauingen - myself and Ed from England, Idriz Zogaj from Sweden and Trevor Nell all the way from South Africa! That included five of the top ten from the recent world championship, and I'm pretty sure Luise Sommer (10th in the WMC) was there too, but helping to organise the junior competition instead of competing.
We started with the Poem, that much-missed memory discipline that was a lot of fun but admittedly impossible to organize fairly in multiple languages. I had previously been the world's best at that, but Astrid by 2004 was widely acknowldeged as being much, much better than me, so it was a pleasant surprise when she produced a bad score this time and I ended up winning. Lukas missed the first discipline, having overslept - maybe Astrid had a late night too?
In five-minute binary, I broke the world record - in fact, it was announced that I'd got a world-beating score of 810, and I had to hassle Hubert Krenn into going back and checking it, because I knew I'd only written down 780 digits. They were all right, though, and 780 was still considered exceptional, way back then.
Names and faces was won comfortably by Clemens, who'd come fourth in the WMC and seemed seriously committed to doing better in the future - legend has it that he'd been corresponding with Gunther Karsten back in 2003, and said he wasn't ready to enter real competitions, because his scores in practice weren't good enough. Gunther pointed out that the scores he said he'd got were better than almost anyone in the world had achieved before, and that he really should think about actually competing, and the rest is history...
30-minute numbers (this was a strangely non-standard-format competition, half-way between a National Standard and International Standard - regulations were a bit looser back then) was also won by Clemens, with a fairly mind-blowing 1000; I came fourth and was realising that my concentration wasn't what it should have been.
I then totally made a mess of ten-minute cards, only getting one pack right, and then speed numbers, where I got just 163, and with Clemens winning both of those too, I had to admit that I wasn't going to add "Austrian Open Champion" to my list of achievements. This was followed by another terrible performance in 15-minute words, which Astrid won handily - that was another of her specialities. Boris was second, in the discipline he'd soon come to rule the world in.
Clemens also won historic dates, which I was supposed to be far and away the world's best at (at the world championship that year I flabbergasted everyone with an enormous score of 80 - those were the days), following which we had a rather eccentric version of spoken numbers.
Most memory competitions, when asked to provide 100 digits spoken at a rate of one per second, make some kind of recording. This competition had a man reading the numbers from a sheet of paper, while another man looked at his watch and waved his finger once a second to show the other when to speak. I don't remember it being a huge disaster, but nobody got a score higher than 60 in either of the two trials.
Finally we came to speed cards, and Lukas, a real speed cards specialist, did a pack in 35.62 seconds. I think he was one of only four people who had ever broken the 40-seconds barrier at that point - the number four sounds right to me, anyway, though I'm racking my brain and can't think who the other one would have been apart from Lukas, me and Andi Bell. Anyone? Anyway, I was well and truly brain-drained by that point and didn't manage to get a pack correct.
That left Clemens the overall winner by some distance, followed by Astrid, Ed, Boris and me. Lukas was a tiny 35 championship points further adrift in sixth, which means I only just scraped into the prize money places - I took €100 home with me, which only barely made me feel better about losing to Ed and Boris just three months after I'd beaten them by miles in the world championship. But that's what happens when you don't practice - after winning the WMC, my motivation dropped off completely, and it was nearly a whole year before I even picked up a pack of cards at home again!
For Clemens, this was the start of seven consecutive memory competition wins, an unbeaten streak that ran right through 2005 and 2006. For Astrid it was the last competition she entered, although she never properly 'retired' and kept talking about coming back for years thereafter. She was much missed, as was the Austrian Memory Championship - 2004 was the last one, and that burgeoning Austrian dominance of memory sports just sort of fizzled out. It's a shame. I want to go back there and see the squirrels!
Friendly Memory Championship 2013
Springtime is the time when people like to get together in a scenic part of the world and have a short, one-day-long memory competition particularly welcoming to beginners, and so I'm pleased to announce that the Friendly Memory Championship is returning to its traditional spot in the schedule in 2013.
The competition will be held in the beautiful surroundings of Attenborough Nature Centre, in Attenborough, near Nottingham, on Sunday 26 May 2013.
Anybody wanting to attend is welcome to stay at my house overnight on Saturday or Sunday - the Monday is a public holiday in Britain, so if you live in this country, you won't need to go to work the next day, probably. There is plenty of other nearby accommodation in Beeston, Attenborough or Chilwell if you want to look for it on the internet - the Rockaway Hotel, just over the road from my place, was heartily recommended by someone who stayed there last year.
The competition will start at 9:00am, promptly, and finish by 6:00pm. It's a rather intense, draining kind of day's work, but there's plenty of opportunity to chat with other memory-competition enthusiasts and have a lot of fun! The entry fee is £30, which includes a hot lunch (very nice hot lunch, at that) at the nature centre - the entry is free to anyone who has never competed at a memory championship before, and the £30 might be significantly reduced for everyone else if we get a lot of people taking part this year (it's to pay for the room hire and expenses, not to make a profit for me!)
The Facebook page contains all the useful information about the event, and is a good place to chat with other people who are coming.
The competition will go something like this...
9:00am - Random Words
You get a sheet of paper with random words on it, and have 5 minutes to memorise them, then you get another sheet of paper with blank spaces, and have 15 minutes to fill in the words you remember. This is the basic format that all ten disciplines follow.
To score points, you need to get a complete column of 20 words all correct - if you have one incorrect word or blank space in a column, you just score 10 for that column; two or more errors or blanks and your score for that column is zero. If a word is correctly remembered but spelt wrong, you only lose the point for that word, so scoring 19 for an otherwise correct column.
For some reason, when I created the slide above, I forgot to make a deliberate spelling mistake, but please just use your imagination and assume that the word with a red 'sp' next to it is somehow spelt wrongly.
For the final column that you fill in, you're allowed to stop part-way down the column and score 1 point for each word (9 points in the above picture). One incorrect word or blank space gives half points for that column, rounded up to the nearest whole number (so it would be 5 points if one of the above was wrong); two or more errors or blanks gives zero points for the column again.
The 'raw score' in each discipline (38 points in the example above) is converted to 'championship points' by comparing it to a standard raw score that gives 1000 championship points - in this case the standard is 125, so a raw score of 38 would give you 304 championship points.
Words can be provided in any language of your choice, provided you ask for translations a month in advance of the competition.
The other nine disciplines work in the same kind of way, so I'll be a bit less wordy in describing them unless the basic principles differ from the ones above.
9:30am - Binary Digits
Ones and noughts - all the number disciplines are arranged in rows rather than columns, but otherwise the same principles apply as in words.
10:00am - Names & Faces
You get a lot of photos of faces, each with a first name and surname underneath it. Then you get the faces in a different order, and have to fill in the names.
There are no rows or columns in this one - you can choose which names to memorise, and each first and last name scores one point. Names will be random and come from any language around the world, not matched to the apparent national origin of the faces or to each other. A picture of me could easily have a name like Baozhong Patel.
Names that are phonetically correct but spelt wrong score half a point, names that are phonetically incorrect but reasonably close to the correct name (three letters different at most) score zero, completely wrong names score minus half a point.
10:30am - 15 Minute Numbers
Just like binary, except these come in rows of 40, rather than 30. There are two 'decimal digits' competitions; this one is the longer version.
11:30am - 10 Minute Cards
Rather than information on paper, you're memorising packs of playing cards here. Then they're recalled on paper, as seen above, by filling in the appropriate number or letter (J, Q, K, A) next to the appropriate suit symbol.
Packs of cards will be provided, although you're welcome to bring your own if you prefer.
12:30pm - Lunch Break
They do really good food there.
1:30pm - 5 Minute Numbers
Exactly like 15 Minute Numbers, only shorter.
2:00pm - Abstract Images
The memorisation paper has lots of rows of five shapes and patterns, as seen above. You have to remember which order they are in, and then fill that in on the recall papers.
3:00pm - Historic Dates
A list of fictional 'historic events' with a year next to them - you have to remember the year and match it to the list of events on the recall paper. As with words, you can ask for a translation into your preferred language.
Again, like names and faces, you can pick and choose which ones to memorise.
3:30pm - Spoken Numbers
This time, instead of reading, you're listening to numbers, spoken at the rate of one digit per second (in English - sorry, only one language available here). Recall is on paper, but you only score up to your first mistake. Two trials - one with 100 digits, and one with 400 - and your best score from the two is what counts.
Scoring is a little unusual here - the championship points you get are 70 times the square root of your raw score.
4:30pm - Speed Cards
Rather than having a time limit to memorise as much as possible, here you're memorising a single pack of cards as quickly as you can (5 minutes maximum). Then you get another pack of cards and have to arrange that into the same sequence as the one you've memorised. Scoring is again weird - the formula is 11170 divided by your time in seconds to the power of 0.75.
And there you have it! Any questions, please post them here!
The competition will be held in the beautiful surroundings of Attenborough Nature Centre, in Attenborough, near Nottingham, on Sunday 26 May 2013.
Anybody wanting to attend is welcome to stay at my house overnight on Saturday or Sunday - the Monday is a public holiday in Britain, so if you live in this country, you won't need to go to work the next day, probably. There is plenty of other nearby accommodation in Beeston, Attenborough or Chilwell if you want to look for it on the internet - the Rockaway Hotel, just over the road from my place, was heartily recommended by someone who stayed there last year.
The competition will start at 9:00am, promptly, and finish by 6:00pm. It's a rather intense, draining kind of day's work, but there's plenty of opportunity to chat with other memory-competition enthusiasts and have a lot of fun! The entry fee is £30, which includes a hot lunch (very nice hot lunch, at that) at the nature centre - the entry is free to anyone who has never competed at a memory championship before, and the £30 might be significantly reduced for everyone else if we get a lot of people taking part this year (it's to pay for the room hire and expenses, not to make a profit for me!)
The Facebook page contains all the useful information about the event, and is a good place to chat with other people who are coming.
9:00am - Random Words
You get a sheet of paper with random words on it, and have 5 minutes to memorise them, then you get another sheet of paper with blank spaces, and have 15 minutes to fill in the words you remember. This is the basic format that all ten disciplines follow.
To score points, you need to get a complete column of 20 words all correct - if you have one incorrect word or blank space in a column, you just score 10 for that column; two or more errors or blanks and your score for that column is zero. If a word is correctly remembered but spelt wrong, you only lose the point for that word, so scoring 19 for an otherwise correct column.
For some reason, when I created the slide above, I forgot to make a deliberate spelling mistake, but please just use your imagination and assume that the word with a red 'sp' next to it is somehow spelt wrongly.
For the final column that you fill in, you're allowed to stop part-way down the column and score 1 point for each word (9 points in the above picture). One incorrect word or blank space gives half points for that column, rounded up to the nearest whole number (so it would be 5 points if one of the above was wrong); two or more errors or blanks gives zero points for the column again.
The 'raw score' in each discipline (38 points in the example above) is converted to 'championship points' by comparing it to a standard raw score that gives 1000 championship points - in this case the standard is 125, so a raw score of 38 would give you 304 championship points.
Words can be provided in any language of your choice, provided you ask for translations a month in advance of the competition.
The other nine disciplines work in the same kind of way, so I'll be a bit less wordy in describing them unless the basic principles differ from the ones above.
9:30am - Binary Digits
Ones and noughts - all the number disciplines are arranged in rows rather than columns, but otherwise the same principles apply as in words.
10:00am - Names & Faces
You get a lot of photos of faces, each with a first name and surname underneath it. Then you get the faces in a different order, and have to fill in the names.
There are no rows or columns in this one - you can choose which names to memorise, and each first and last name scores one point. Names will be random and come from any language around the world, not matched to the apparent national origin of the faces or to each other. A picture of me could easily have a name like Baozhong Patel.
Names that are phonetically correct but spelt wrong score half a point, names that are phonetically incorrect but reasonably close to the correct name (three letters different at most) score zero, completely wrong names score minus half a point.
10:30am - 15 Minute Numbers
Just like binary, except these come in rows of 40, rather than 30. There are two 'decimal digits' competitions; this one is the longer version.
11:30am - 10 Minute Cards
Rather than information on paper, you're memorising packs of playing cards here. Then they're recalled on paper, as seen above, by filling in the appropriate number or letter (J, Q, K, A) next to the appropriate suit symbol.
Packs of cards will be provided, although you're welcome to bring your own if you prefer.
12:30pm - Lunch Break
They do really good food there.
1:30pm - 5 Minute Numbers
Exactly like 15 Minute Numbers, only shorter.
2:00pm - Abstract Images
The memorisation paper has lots of rows of five shapes and patterns, as seen above. You have to remember which order they are in, and then fill that in on the recall papers.
3:00pm - Historic Dates
A list of fictional 'historic events' with a year next to them - you have to remember the year and match it to the list of events on the recall paper. As with words, you can ask for a translation into your preferred language.
Again, like names and faces, you can pick and choose which ones to memorise.
3:30pm - Spoken Numbers
This time, instead of reading, you're listening to numbers, spoken at the rate of one digit per second (in English - sorry, only one language available here). Recall is on paper, but you only score up to your first mistake. Two trials - one with 100 digits, and one with 400 - and your best score from the two is what counts.
Scoring is a little unusual here - the championship points you get are 70 times the square root of your raw score.
4:30pm - Speed Cards
Rather than having a time limit to memorise as much as possible, here you're memorising a single pack of cards as quickly as you can (5 minutes maximum). Then you get another pack of cards and have to arrange that into the same sequence as the one you've memorised. Scoring is again weird - the formula is 11170 divided by your time in seconds to the power of 0.75.
And there you have it! Any questions, please post them here!
Sunday, January 13, 2013
WARM winter ahead!
All of the newspapers are proclaiming that it's going to be freezing cold and snowy and kill everyone (Yahoo news included the phrase "nobody in the UK is safe," which seems a teensy bit melodramatic), but they all said the same thing last winter, which turned out to be really mild.
Consequently, I no longer believe anything that the news says about winter weather, and I'm going to wander around outside in just my pants. If I get hypothermia, it's entirely the fault of the media.
Consequently, I no longer believe anything that the news says about winter weather, and I'm going to wander around outside in just my pants. If I get hypothermia, it's entirely the fault of the media.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Daytime TV
Deal Or No Deal was really really great today; he took out the whole power five in the first two rounds, but rallied right at the end to take home £15,000!
Yes, I need a job.
Yes, I need a job.
Saturday, January 05, 2013
New look
I still haven't watched the whole of Britain's Brightest, but it got me thinking about a change of appearance. I always do these things in my normal scruffy clothes, unless the TV show specifically orders me to wear a big black cloak, but I can't help thinking that this particular one would have worked better if I was wearing something a bit fancy. Most of what I said was scripted, which is my excuse for any bits that sounded horribly unnatural, but judging by what the script said, I think they were expecting a slightly more flamboyantly eccentric kind of "memory expert"...
I've always wondered what it would be like to wear a suit that fits me - even when I'm being an accountant, I wear a tatty old thing like a scarecrow with an office job might - so should I maybe splash out and get one? Maybe go all Doctor Who and wear a bow tie? I just fancy the idea of making a change and being eccentric in a way that doesn't involve appearing on TV in a jumper that I've had since I was sixteen. Any suggestions?
I've always wondered what it would be like to wear a suit that fits me - even when I'm being an accountant, I wear a tatty old thing like a scarecrow with an office job might - so should I maybe splash out and get one? Maybe go all Doctor Who and wear a bow tie? I just fancy the idea of making a change and being eccentric in a way that doesn't involve appearing on TV in a jumper that I've had since I was sixteen. Any suggestions?
Anyone see it?
I just got a call to say I was on "Britain's Brightest", and turned it on just in time to see the last couple of seconds of the bit with me on. Sorry I didn't give my many fans a warning, but I don't think it was really worth seeing. The quiz/game bit that's on after me looks like a lot of fun, though! Find four-letter words in a grid while mentally estimating 27 seconds - that was just brilliantly original!
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Resolve
I've made a slightly-late resolution to do some kind of memory training every day, even if it's only a quick pack of cards or two. Well, it makes up for the cherry coke-related one, which I've already broken.
Anyway, I did a pack in just over 27 seconds today, which is better than I've done for a while, so I'm sure I'll soon be back up to speed on them. Tomorrow I have to go back to the tedious business of finding a job, unless my other resolution - winning the lottery - works out tonight. Oh well.
Anyway, I did a pack in just over 27 seconds today, which is better than I've done for a while, so I'm sure I'll soon be back up to speed on them. Tomorrow I have to go back to the tedious business of finding a job, unless my other resolution - winning the lottery - works out tonight. Oh well.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
He's the memory man
Woo, I've just done an hour cards practice session! First time for, oooh, longer than I can remember! Tomorrow, hour numbers, which I've always found the most difficult of the three long disciplines to sit down and train for. Then, when 2013 comes around, I'll be regularly training and checking to see what kind of scores I got! There's no point at the moment, it would only discourage me. Baby steps, people.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Do you remember the first time?
I'm in a talking-about-memory mood lately. I'm even in a practicing-some-memory mood! I did a 30-minute binary practice today, which went quite painfully slowly and mind-wanderingly, but I know I can only improve. If I manage to do the hour events in the next couple of days, it'll set me on the course to my new year's resolution for 2013 - to do lots of training and then win the world championship! I like to aim high.
I've also been catching up on Nelson's blog, and since I don't remember plugging it here before, go and check it out now! Lots of memory talk to be found there!
Meanwhile, I thought it would be fun to blog about the olden days of memory competitions some more, just so that all these newcomers can get a feeling of what it was like in the days before I even had a blog! (I always assume that my blog is the sole source of information about everything, everywhere)
Cast your mind back, then, to August 2003. I was considerably younger, and the "Ben System" was younger still - I'd come up with it about six months before, and had been enthusiastically practicing with it ever since, although I was still a long way from world-beating levels. The MSO Memory Championship was the first time I'd had a chance to use it in a real competition, and I was thinking about switching back to my old system for things like speed cards, because I still hadn't got to the kind of speed with my two-card-image technique that I'd been capable of with the one-card-image thing. But I decided to just plough ahead with the new system, reasoning that every bit of training would get me closer to winning the world championship. To be honest, I was sort of obsessed with that idea at the time.
I was newly bearded, still had my original hat, and had lost a lot of weight since the previous August - something which I hadn't actually realised until John Louis pointed it out to me. I was possibly the thinnest I've ever been, a combination of giving up coca-cola for financial reasons, a lot of walking and probably a lot of mental exertion with the Ben System. I also had a really bad, streaming cold that week, and had to spend the competition pausing to wipe my nose constantly while trying to memorise numbers and pick up packs of cards. Blowing your nose while other competitors are trying to concentrate is sort of frowned upon.
The MSO championship had been a separate thing from the WMC since 2001 - if you want a fun read, look for the public correspondence between David Levy and Ray Keene as to why that was - and had fluctuating attendance figures. The 2001 event was a couple of days before the WMC, and also in London, and got quite a lot of people taking part as a bit of a warm-up. In 2002, the MSO went to Loughborough, a week before the WMC, and got a whopping three competitors. In 2003, at the university in Manchester (a really great MSO location, by the way!) but with the world championship set for Kuala Lumpur in November, the MSO memory competition amassed nine entrants.
It was very multinational, too - along with me, there were John Louis from India and Pierre Berbinau from France, who'd both started competing within the last couple of years; old-timers and hot favourites Gunther Karsten of Germany and Yip Swe Chooi of Malaysia; debutants Ed Cooke from England and Charlie Garavan from Ireland (possibly the two most fun guys and best conversationalists ever to attend a memory championship!); and Dr Yip's two latest students from Indonesia, Titiani Loren and Fanny Boediman.
You couldn't make it up, could you? The avuncular fifty-something Dr Yip accompanied everywhere by two attractive young women who cheerfully introduced themselves to everyone as "Titty and Fanny". James Bond meets Moonwalking With Einstein.
The competition was six disciplines over two days, including both hour-long marathons and speed cards - the organisers were keen that people should have the opportunity to achieve the new Grand Master norms. The 2002 event had taken the same approach, but squeezed the whole thing into one day, which was seriously exhausting!
2003 was rather less stressful, and produced lots of results that were awesome for the time - four new Grand Masters (me, John, Titty and Fanny) and two new world records, both from Gunther. I was absolutely delighted with my own performance all the way through (even pretty happy with names and faces) and really, hugely, super-enthusiastic about memory!
We started with binary digits, which I'd always disliked in the olden days, because I hadn't been able to come up with a good system. Now that I had, I loved it! I got a score of 2850, which I'd be disappointed with today, but back then for anyone to get 3000 was practically unheard-of, so my score was considered really amazingly huge! Gunther broke his own world record with 3180. He was always far and away the world's best at binary back then. Heehee, I soon took over that position!
Next was random words, which I hadn't trained for at all, but I still got a really great score for the time - 168. Perfect memory, too - not a single mistake. I was just in such a positive frame of mind after the binary, despite my rotten cold, that anything seemed possible!
Finally for the first day, hour cards, and the improvement over my original system was huge - I'd long since realised that doing more than ten packs with one image per card was impossible - each of my 52 images would appear once per pack, and it was just too confusing. With the all-new Ben System, the only limit was struggling to remember my 2704 images quickly enough, and even though I was still new to it, I got 13 packs. The lowest score out of the nine competitors was six packs, which is quite impressive, isn't it? Small turnout, but good quality.
So I was actually in the lead after the first day, which was better than even I'd expected!
Day two started off with hour numbers, which the all-conquering Ben System is admittedly not so hot at. But I still managed a hugely impressive 1630 nonetheless. Dr Yip was famously good at numbers, and got 1855, but Gunther surpassed even that, with another new world record score of 1914.
In names and faces I managed 70, which isn't so bad. Gunther somehow got 83, when he's normally even worse than me at names! Newcomers Ed and Charlie got the highest scores, with 99 and 88 respectively - okay, pretty low winning scores, but the rest of the competition was full of great results!
So we went into the speed cards, and I just needed a reasonably good time to win the competition. Treading carefully with the new system, I did 2 minutes 40 seconds in the first trial (going through the pack twice) and then 1 minute 38 in the second. I sped up a lot once I'd had a bit more practice! Dr Yip had the best time with 1:13, which with Gunther not getting a pack correct (he tried 55 seconds both times, but had errors) was enough for second place overall.
So I won my first memory championship! There was prize money, too - a whopping £300 for first place! It was a great couple of days all round!
As one final note, did you know that Indonesia and Monaco have nearly identical flags? I didn't, until I just noticed today that Fanny Boediman's got the wrong one on the memory sports statistics site!
I've also been catching up on Nelson's blog, and since I don't remember plugging it here before, go and check it out now! Lots of memory talk to be found there!
Meanwhile, I thought it would be fun to blog about the olden days of memory competitions some more, just so that all these newcomers can get a feeling of what it was like in the days before I even had a blog! (I always assume that my blog is the sole source of information about everything, everywhere)
Cast your mind back, then, to August 2003. I was considerably younger, and the "Ben System" was younger still - I'd come up with it about six months before, and had been enthusiastically practicing with it ever since, although I was still a long way from world-beating levels. The MSO Memory Championship was the first time I'd had a chance to use it in a real competition, and I was thinking about switching back to my old system for things like speed cards, because I still hadn't got to the kind of speed with my two-card-image technique that I'd been capable of with the one-card-image thing. But I decided to just plough ahead with the new system, reasoning that every bit of training would get me closer to winning the world championship. To be honest, I was sort of obsessed with that idea at the time.
I was newly bearded, still had my original hat, and had lost a lot of weight since the previous August - something which I hadn't actually realised until John Louis pointed it out to me. I was possibly the thinnest I've ever been, a combination of giving up coca-cola for financial reasons, a lot of walking and probably a lot of mental exertion with the Ben System. I also had a really bad, streaming cold that week, and had to spend the competition pausing to wipe my nose constantly while trying to memorise numbers and pick up packs of cards. Blowing your nose while other competitors are trying to concentrate is sort of frowned upon.
The MSO championship had been a separate thing from the WMC since 2001 - if you want a fun read, look for the public correspondence between David Levy and Ray Keene as to why that was - and had fluctuating attendance figures. The 2001 event was a couple of days before the WMC, and also in London, and got quite a lot of people taking part as a bit of a warm-up. In 2002, the MSO went to Loughborough, a week before the WMC, and got a whopping three competitors. In 2003, at the university in Manchester (a really great MSO location, by the way!) but with the world championship set for Kuala Lumpur in November, the MSO memory competition amassed nine entrants.
It was very multinational, too - along with me, there were John Louis from India and Pierre Berbinau from France, who'd both started competing within the last couple of years; old-timers and hot favourites Gunther Karsten of Germany and Yip Swe Chooi of Malaysia; debutants Ed Cooke from England and Charlie Garavan from Ireland (possibly the two most fun guys and best conversationalists ever to attend a memory championship!); and Dr Yip's two latest students from Indonesia, Titiani Loren and Fanny Boediman.
You couldn't make it up, could you? The avuncular fifty-something Dr Yip accompanied everywhere by two attractive young women who cheerfully introduced themselves to everyone as "Titty and Fanny". James Bond meets Moonwalking With Einstein.
The competition was six disciplines over two days, including both hour-long marathons and speed cards - the organisers were keen that people should have the opportunity to achieve the new Grand Master norms. The 2002 event had taken the same approach, but squeezed the whole thing into one day, which was seriously exhausting!
2003 was rather less stressful, and produced lots of results that were awesome for the time - four new Grand Masters (me, John, Titty and Fanny) and two new world records, both from Gunther. I was absolutely delighted with my own performance all the way through (even pretty happy with names and faces) and really, hugely, super-enthusiastic about memory!
We started with binary digits, which I'd always disliked in the olden days, because I hadn't been able to come up with a good system. Now that I had, I loved it! I got a score of 2850, which I'd be disappointed with today, but back then for anyone to get 3000 was practically unheard-of, so my score was considered really amazingly huge! Gunther broke his own world record with 3180. He was always far and away the world's best at binary back then. Heehee, I soon took over that position!
Next was random words, which I hadn't trained for at all, but I still got a really great score for the time - 168. Perfect memory, too - not a single mistake. I was just in such a positive frame of mind after the binary, despite my rotten cold, that anything seemed possible!
Finally for the first day, hour cards, and the improvement over my original system was huge - I'd long since realised that doing more than ten packs with one image per card was impossible - each of my 52 images would appear once per pack, and it was just too confusing. With the all-new Ben System, the only limit was struggling to remember my 2704 images quickly enough, and even though I was still new to it, I got 13 packs. The lowest score out of the nine competitors was six packs, which is quite impressive, isn't it? Small turnout, but good quality.
So I was actually in the lead after the first day, which was better than even I'd expected!
Day two started off with hour numbers, which the all-conquering Ben System is admittedly not so hot at. But I still managed a hugely impressive 1630 nonetheless. Dr Yip was famously good at numbers, and got 1855, but Gunther surpassed even that, with another new world record score of 1914.
In names and faces I managed 70, which isn't so bad. Gunther somehow got 83, when he's normally even worse than me at names! Newcomers Ed and Charlie got the highest scores, with 99 and 88 respectively - okay, pretty low winning scores, but the rest of the competition was full of great results!
So we went into the speed cards, and I just needed a reasonably good time to win the competition. Treading carefully with the new system, I did 2 minutes 40 seconds in the first trial (going through the pack twice) and then 1 minute 38 in the second. I sped up a lot once I'd had a bit more practice! Dr Yip had the best time with 1:13, which with Gunther not getting a pack correct (he tried 55 seconds both times, but had errors) was enough for second place overall.
So I won my first memory championship! There was prize money, too - a whopping £300 for first place! It was a great couple of days all round!
As one final note, did you know that Indonesia and Monaco have nearly identical flags? I didn't, until I just noticed today that Fanny Boediman's got the wrong one on the memory sports statistics site!
Friday, December 28, 2012
Grand Master of Memory
You can tell I'm not working today, can't you? There has been talk about the title of "Grand Master" on the Facebook page for the World Memory Championship, and it put me in mind to do a bit of historical research about this illustrious title - because nobody really knows the history of it, even though it's less than twenty years old, and it's impossible to find details on the internet unless you really, really know where to look...
According to Use Your Head (aka Synapsia) magazine, the idea was first announced at the World Championships in 1995. The magazine says that the qualification was based on "the Buzan/Bond Mind Sports Rating System for Memory", and nowhere explains exactly what this was, although it was apparently just based on the hour cards and hour numbers scores. The idea was that it gave a score similar to the ELO system for chess, and it obviously wasn't based on any kind of simple multiplication, because Dominic O'Brien was much, much better than anyone else in those days, but only had a slightly higher Buzan/Bond score. Still, the first Grand Masters - who were given their awards in a big fancy ceremony by Prince Philipp of Liechtenstein - were:
Dominic O'Brien (2814)
Jonathan Hancock (2710)
Mark Channon (2577)
Andi Bell (2569)
Kevin Horsley (2545)
Patrick Colgan (2452)
Philip Bond (2504)
Creighton Carvello (2464)
I'm willing to bet that the scoring system was devised with two goals in mind - to make Dominic's memory rating match Garry Kasparov's chess rating (the article mentions that his highest rating at that time was 2815), and to make Philip Bond's score over 2500, so that he could be a GM too.
Use Your Head also mentions that James Lee has a rating of 2463, higher than Patrick Colgan, but isn't a GM - it doesn't say why, but I assume Patrick was given the title because he held the world record in the old Poem discipline at that time. It also mentions that Sue Whiting was "very close to qualifying as the first female Grandmaster of Memory".
She, along with Michael Tipper, Ian Docherty and Stephen Clarke, were added to the GM list over the next few years; I have no idea why or how, I can't find any official reference to the standards that were used. By the time I came along in 2000, the whole Grand Master thing had sort of gone into hibernation - the only mention of it was that Tony Buzan constantly addressed Michael Tipper (who back then was performing the role that Phil Chambers has made his own nowadays of running the WMC) as "Grand Master Tipper".
Then, in 2001, the WMSC (which might have still been called the IFMS then) decided to get scientific and serious about scoring systems, and we got the "Milennium Standard" concept that is still in use today - for each of the ten disciplines (historic dates was added that year to bring it back up to ten - it had been just nine ever since the 'images' discipline was dropped a few years earlier) there was a standard score that would give 1000 points, and each competitor's result in each discipline gave them a milennium score proportionate to the standard.
The standards have gone up sharply in the last decade (and some went down, because they were much too high, and then up again...) - for the sake of nostalgia, here are the original standards from 2001:
Hour Numbers 2500
Speed Numbers 400
Binary Numbers 3000
Spoken Numbers 200
Hour Cards 1538 (29½ packs)
Speed Cards 30sec
Names & Faces 200
Poem 300
Random Words 250
Historic Dates 50
This new system came with a whole raft of new rules about how to become a Grand Master! There were three different ways to qualify:
a) Achieve the three Grand Master norms - 713 digits in Hour Numbers, 365 cards (7 packs plus one more card) in Hour Cards, and under 3 minutes in Speed Cards.
b) Score over 5000 championship points across the ten disciplines (Decathlon Grand Master).
c) Score over 2500 championship points across the five disciplines Words, Poem, Speed Numbers, Names & Faces and Spoken Numbers (Pentathlon Grand Master).
A score of 3000 over the ten disciplines made you an International Master - in 2002, I had a lot of fun calling myself "Ben Pridmore, International Master of Memory". It sounds really much cooler than it was, and conjures up images of a James Bond kind of person who travels around the world, remembering things. Probably in a very cool car.
In 2003, the norms were rejigged to the levels they still are today - 1000 digits, 10 packs of cards, 2 minutes - and the Decathlon qualifying score was increased to 6000 for Grand Master, 4000 for International Master. As far as I know, the Pentathlon title was never mentioned by anyone ever again after that first announcement - the Poem was dropped after 2005, so it's no longer possible to do it anyway. The Decathlon rule was also forgotten about over the next few years, and so we were left with the Normal Grand Master rules, which have been unchanged ever since! Consistency is victory!
I'm currently agitating for an official "Double Grand Master" title to be conferred on Wang Feng, Liu Su, Simon Reinhard and Johannes Mallow, who have all managed to do 2000 digits in Hour Numbers, 20 packs in Hour Cards and under 1 minute in Speed Cards. When I finally get round to developing a new system for numbers, I hope to join that elite group...
According to Use Your Head (aka Synapsia) magazine, the idea was first announced at the World Championships in 1995. The magazine says that the qualification was based on "the Buzan/Bond Mind Sports Rating System for Memory", and nowhere explains exactly what this was, although it was apparently just based on the hour cards and hour numbers scores. The idea was that it gave a score similar to the ELO system for chess, and it obviously wasn't based on any kind of simple multiplication, because Dominic O'Brien was much, much better than anyone else in those days, but only had a slightly higher Buzan/Bond score. Still, the first Grand Masters - who were given their awards in a big fancy ceremony by Prince Philipp of Liechtenstein - were:
Dominic O'Brien (2814)
Jonathan Hancock (2710)
Mark Channon (2577)
Andi Bell (2569)
Kevin Horsley (2545)
Patrick Colgan (2452)
Philip Bond (2504)
Creighton Carvello (2464)
I'm willing to bet that the scoring system was devised with two goals in mind - to make Dominic's memory rating match Garry Kasparov's chess rating (the article mentions that his highest rating at that time was 2815), and to make Philip Bond's score over 2500, so that he could be a GM too.
Use Your Head also mentions that James Lee has a rating of 2463, higher than Patrick Colgan, but isn't a GM - it doesn't say why, but I assume Patrick was given the title because he held the world record in the old Poem discipline at that time. It also mentions that Sue Whiting was "very close to qualifying as the first female Grandmaster of Memory".
She, along with Michael Tipper, Ian Docherty and Stephen Clarke, were added to the GM list over the next few years; I have no idea why or how, I can't find any official reference to the standards that were used. By the time I came along in 2000, the whole Grand Master thing had sort of gone into hibernation - the only mention of it was that Tony Buzan constantly addressed Michael Tipper (who back then was performing the role that Phil Chambers has made his own nowadays of running the WMC) as "Grand Master Tipper".
Then, in 2001, the WMSC (which might have still been called the IFMS then) decided to get scientific and serious about scoring systems, and we got the "Milennium Standard" concept that is still in use today - for each of the ten disciplines (historic dates was added that year to bring it back up to ten - it had been just nine ever since the 'images' discipline was dropped a few years earlier) there was a standard score that would give 1000 points, and each competitor's result in each discipline gave them a milennium score proportionate to the standard.
The standards have gone up sharply in the last decade (and some went down, because they were much too high, and then up again...) - for the sake of nostalgia, here are the original standards from 2001:
Hour Numbers 2500
Speed Numbers 400
Binary Numbers 3000
Spoken Numbers 200
Hour Cards 1538 (29½ packs)
Speed Cards 30sec
Names & Faces 200
Poem 300
Random Words 250
Historic Dates 50
This new system came with a whole raft of new rules about how to become a Grand Master! There were three different ways to qualify:
a) Achieve the three Grand Master norms - 713 digits in Hour Numbers, 365 cards (7 packs plus one more card) in Hour Cards, and under 3 minutes in Speed Cards.
b) Score over 5000 championship points across the ten disciplines (Decathlon Grand Master).
c) Score over 2500 championship points across the five disciplines Words, Poem, Speed Numbers, Names & Faces and Spoken Numbers (Pentathlon Grand Master).
A score of 3000 over the ten disciplines made you an International Master - in 2002, I had a lot of fun calling myself "Ben Pridmore, International Master of Memory". It sounds really much cooler than it was, and conjures up images of a James Bond kind of person who travels around the world, remembering things. Probably in a very cool car.
In 2003, the norms were rejigged to the levels they still are today - 1000 digits, 10 packs of cards, 2 minutes - and the Decathlon qualifying score was increased to 6000 for Grand Master, 4000 for International Master. As far as I know, the Pentathlon title was never mentioned by anyone ever again after that first announcement - the Poem was dropped after 2005, so it's no longer possible to do it anyway. The Decathlon rule was also forgotten about over the next few years, and so we were left with the Normal Grand Master rules, which have been unchanged ever since! Consistency is victory!
I'm currently agitating for an official "Double Grand Master" title to be conferred on Wang Feng, Liu Su, Simon Reinhard and Johannes Mallow, who have all managed to do 2000 digits in Hour Numbers, 20 packs in Hour Cards and under 1 minute in Speed Cards. When I finally get round to developing a new system for numbers, I hope to join that elite group...
Thursday, December 27, 2012
It's grim oop north
E4 is full of trailers for a new series called "My Mad Fat Diary", which is apparently set in Lincolnshire. Although it's great to see my much-neglected home county getting some TV coverage, I can't help but notice that the actress playing the central character is speaking "Northern", that strange dialect adopted by southern actors when they're asked to pretend they're from somewhere north of Watford. Nobody in Lincolnshire sounds even remotely like that!
The internet says that Sharon Rooney is from Glasgow, but I'd bet you anything that she went to drama school in London and has never set foot in the bit of England in between. The premise of the series looks fun, and it'll probably be good, but just bear in mind that anyone who watches it is personally insulting me and the whole Lincolnshire/East Midlands region, please.
Anyway, I hope you all had a good Christmas!
The internet says that Sharon Rooney is from Glasgow, but I'd bet you anything that she went to drama school in London and has never set foot in the bit of England in between. The premise of the series looks fun, and it'll probably be good, but just bear in mind that anyone who watches it is personally insulting me and the whole Lincolnshire/East Midlands region, please.
Anyway, I hope you all had a good Christmas!
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The World Memory Championship 2012
Okay, here's everything I can remember about the competition!
Firstly, it took place in the Lilian Baylis Technology School, in Vauxhall, London. The internet tells me that Lilian Baylis was a theatrical producer and manager who got lots of things named after her, personal experience tells me that as soon as schools are allowed to name themselves whatever they want, they put "technology" in the name, for some reason. The secondary modern my mother used to teach at is a Technology College nowadays.
Despite this, it's a very well-equipped and well-run school, that reportedly does lots of good for underprivileged children. The corridors and rooms we congregated in are all shiny and modern and clean, and I'd want to go to school there if I was a teenage Londoner. We were in the sports hall, which I'm pretty sure is bigger than the one at my old school, and the arbiters were across the hall in some sort of theatre room. The prize ceremony was in some sort of auditorium, which we also didn't have at my old school.
Tony Buzan, incidentally, was hugely enthusiastic about the setting, and said so all weekend. I feel that I should report this, out of fairness, since I like to characterise him in this blog as someone who insists on opulent luxury wherever he goes, and he didn't give me a single chance to do that. Maybe next time...
Which brings me on to applauding all the people who ran the event! Phil Chambers didn't get a namecheck in last Thursday's blog because he was stuck in traffic, but he ran everything with his usual efficiency and making-sure-nothing-goes-wrongism. Jennifer Goddard, likewise, was running around non-stop with pieces of paper that probably had important things on them, and although she was showing serious signs of stress by Sunday, she never (as far as I know) physically assaulted anyone. Chris Day ran the electronics and acted as DJ at the prizegiving with his usual mix of triumphant music - we got a brief burst of "Star Trekkin'" by The Firm at one point, before he quickly cut it off, so I'd like to know what else he's got on that playlist.
Dominic O'Brien was in charge of anti-cheating, as always, although I don't think there was any cheating to be anti. He implied that there were hidden cameras watching our every move, which seemed even more implausible than usual in the giant sports hall with big empty walls and high ceilings...
Idriz Zogaj, Kranthi Raj, Andy Fong and Angel Lai were also supervising and coordinating all the happenings, and there was a whole roomful of arbiters marking papers in the back - they were all locked away and only allowed out, blinking in the natural light, for the speed cards, but they included a couple of people interested in competing in the future and bolstering the ranks of British competitors. I'll announce details of the Friendly / Cambridge Memory Championship 2013 before too long.
And so to the results! As usual, you have to consolidate different websites to find out what happened, but the situation's improved now that the World Memory Statistics site has a page for the complete results instead of splitting it into adult, junior and kids pages. Memocamp has the more user-friendly all-on-one-page summary, but you have to bear in mind that various people have the wrong country's flag next to their name, and Yi Zhiqin's names & faces score is attributed to "Takesi-sawai" by mistake.
I think that mistake might have been on the score printouts at the championship, but I'm not sure. In any case, I think "Takesi" was supposed to have been there, but wasn't, so his name will have been on the spreadsheets. Incidentally, the approved transliteration of that name is "Takeshi", and you shouldn't use a hyphen.
Here's the final standings, with notes on whatever that name reminds me of:
1 Johannes Mallow Germany 8413
2 Simon Reinhard Germany 8344
Hannes just slightly had the edge all weekend - on the second day, when he won all four disciplines, he pulled out into a big lead, but then Simon had some of his favourite events on day three, getting big scores on the words and spoken numbers, meaning it was still all to play for at the speed cards, where Simon is by some distance the world's best. In the end, neither of them got a pack correct on the first trial (actually, practically no-one did), and Simon's 27.21 seconds wasn't quite enough to overhaul Johannes with his 42.19. I think that's the closest finish in World Memory Championship history!
3 Jonas von Essen Sweden 6692
The Swedish team came equipped with a film crew and a band of miscellaneous supporters who made sure their memorisers were cheered louder than anyone else. Jonas was fighting for third all the way through, but stayed ahead of Christian and Boris with the kind of scores that would have won the championship a few years ago. He's probably just going to improve in years to come, too...
4 Boris Konrad Germany 6446
5 Christian Schäfer Germany 6199
Completing a German domination of the top five. Boris overhauled Christian on the final day, and also moved back up into the top ten of the world rankings - finally displacing Astrid Plessl, my rival from the olden days who hasn't competed since 2004. This has the interesting effect of making the world's top 10 an all-male affair. Come on, memory women of the world, get to the competitions and strike a blow for equality!
Meanwhile, Tony was greatly improved in his pronunciation of foreign names this year, and had even learned the word "Deutschland", but he still got Christian's surname wrong.
6 Ben Pridmore England 5472
It went about as well as I could have expected with no training. At the prizegiving, my knees hurt - they get stiff if I stay sitting down with bent legs for too long, and I've never had that problem before at prize ceremonies, because I'm usually up and down to the stage, getting top-three-in-the-discipline prizes. This year all I got was a joint-third in the binary digits.
7 Nelson Dellis USA 5273
Team USA were accompanied by a film crew of two young women following Nelson around with a camera. There was also a guy from the company that's aiming to film the both of us next year for the delayed feature film. Hopefully I'll be more impressive for the cameras in 2013, although I can see I'll have to go some just to stay ahead of the likes of Nelson.
8 Ola Kåre Risa Norway 5099
And Ola, too. He might well have been ahead of me and Nelson both, if he'd managed to get a time in speed cards. And he uses the "Ben System" with pride, so there you go!
9 Erwin G. Balines Philippines 4779
10 Mark Anthony P. Castaneda Philippines 4703
Team Philippines were the big new success story of the competition - Erwin was consistently good across all ten disciplines, and Mark Anthony (which is a great name, by the way) had the highest score in spoken numbers - high scores in all three trials, in fact!
11 Marwin Wallonius Sweden 4609
Team Sweden came second, with Marwin and Mattias backing up Jonas. Maybe they can stop the Germans winning by miles and miles, next time?
12 Yudi Lesmana Indonesia 4069
You know, the internet says that Yudi and I met at the 2003 world championship in Malaysia, but I didn't remember that, and apparently nor did he, because we talked to each other as if we'd never met in real life before...
13 James Paterson Wales 3844
Wales is a separate country in the memory world. This is a recent innovation, but apparently it's being strictly enforced.
14 Li Kam Fung Hong Kong 3819
So is Hong Kong. I don't know if the Chinese government would approve.
15 Mattias Ribbing Sweden 3813
16 Annalena Fischer Germany 3715
17 Konstantin Skudler Germany 3667
18 Saswat Satapathy India 3495
Konstantin was the top junior, not far ahead of Saswat. Amusingly, Tony forgot to announce the junior winners at the prize ceremony - Dominic and Phil corrected his other lapses of memory during the lengthy event, but nobody noticed that little slip.
19 Tobiasz Boral Poland 3399
The Polish team were another nation that did much better here than they ever have before. It really is getting more multinational!
20 Jürgen Petersen Germany 3255
21 Carsten Diete Germany 3197
So many Germans... we have to muster a big British team some day.
22 Sri Vyshnavi Yarlagadda India 3040
Third-best junior, and outright winner of the names and faces, which caused some amusement when the prize ceremony gave the medals to the three best adults and the three best juniors, then had to swap them half an hour later when someone remembered it's not supposed to be 'best adults', it's 'best everybody' and extra prizes for juniors.
23 Li Hua Xi Rui China 2994
Her name was written on the score printouts at the championship as LI HUA Xi Rui, and sort of semi-corrected on the website to LI Hua Xi Rui. Someone likes capitals. I'm not an expert on Chinese names, but aren't they usually two or three words, not four? I should have asked her that.
24 Dong Xun China 2828
Top "kid". There were only four competitors who fit into that age category, but the prize ceremony still got three of them up on the stage for the certificates from each of the ten disciplines. But, like the juniors, not for the overall prizes.
25 Ma Yunfeng China 2821
26 Matteo Salvo Italy 2809
I can recognise Matteo on sight now - Jonas, too! See, I'm improving!
27 Rajendra Jain India 2725
Darned if I can remember anything about Raj's physical appearance off the top of my head, though. I'd know him if I saw him, maybe...
28 Mark Aarøe Nissen Denmark 2550
29 Christopher E Carandang Philippines 2530
Christopher spent a lot of time rounding up the entire population of the Philippines to have their photo taken with me. I think it's a cunning scheme to blind me with flashbulbs.
30 Rick de Jong Netherlands 2494
31 Bartlomiej Boral Poland 2476
32 Brad Zupp USA 2433
33 Ni Ziqiang China 2416
34 Xu Jingcheng China 2406
35 Joachim Andersson Sweden 2392
36 Roberto M. Racasa Philippines 2391
37 Chan Chi Wa Hong Kong 2289
38 Jamyla D. Lambunao Philippines 2277
39 Anne Reulke Germany 2249
40 Joona Aapeli Marjakangas Finland 2115
41 Anne Bernadette D. Bonita Philippines 2093
42 Lakshman Dongari India 2063
43 Tansel Ali Australia 2051
Tansel was mainly here to accompany Todd Sampson and the film crew that were following him. They were particularly impressed by my eccentricity - I'm a natural star, you know. It's the odd socks. Everyone loved them this year, though I've always worn them, except when I was wearing the Swedish ones that were a present from Idriz.
44 Hu Xisheng China 1991
45 Malte Godbersen Germany 1927
46 Lu Ming China 1863
47 Christopher Beeg Germany 1861
48 Jakob Krautloher Germany 1852
49 Timo Sprekeler Germany 1787
50 Søren Damtoft Denmark 1769
51 Axel J. Tabernilla Philippines 1721
52 Princess Grace N. Mendoza Philippines 1579
53 Ramyasree Yarlagadda India 1554
54 Mücahit Aköz Turkey 1457
55 Cristine Barao Philippines 1398
56 Divya Radhakrishnan India 1330
57 Pierre Berbinau France 1310
There still might be a French championship at some point in the near future. Jérôme couldn't make it to London at the last minute, but we still had the slightly out-of-practice Pierre, making what is becoming his traditional once-every-three-years appearance at a memory championship. Still, the possibility does exist of bridging that strange memory-free gap between England and Germany, and getting regular events there too!
58 Luis Angel Echeverria USA 1210
59 Hui Xin Khoo Malaysia 1193
60 Ian Roi Spencer A. Betiong Philippines 1064
61 Jørgen Fogh Denmark 1022
62 Martin Mwaka England 1018
63 Blessie Mae Ayalde Philippines 885
64 Sean Kelly Ireland 820
Another comeback kid, having last competed in 1998. You know, I always go on about all the young people at memory competitions nowadays, but there were quite a lot of competitors over the age of forty, too!
65 Yi Zhiqin China 740
66 Afzal Khan England 641
67 Lam Tin Lok Hong Kong 534
68 Wang Dexin China 512
69 Ryan S. Smith England 454
70 Thomas Niranjan Kumar India 247
71 Yuuta Tanaka Japan 83
72 Todd Sampson Australia 33
Todd came here to memorise a pack of cards for the TV cameras, he didn't take part in any other disciplines.
72 competitors is down on the last couple of years, but that's because we didn't have the army of Chinese - in terms of countries represented, we're improving. Next year, who knows where it'll be. I quite like the idea of the Philippines, or Mongolia. Tony said seven countries had expressed interest, and then reeled off a list of eight different places, although I don't know if anyone anywhere has really seriously considered placing an "official bid". I'd be quite happy with Lilian Baylis again!
Firstly, it took place in the Lilian Baylis Technology School, in Vauxhall, London. The internet tells me that Lilian Baylis was a theatrical producer and manager who got lots of things named after her, personal experience tells me that as soon as schools are allowed to name themselves whatever they want, they put "technology" in the name, for some reason. The secondary modern my mother used to teach at is a Technology College nowadays.
Despite this, it's a very well-equipped and well-run school, that reportedly does lots of good for underprivileged children. The corridors and rooms we congregated in are all shiny and modern and clean, and I'd want to go to school there if I was a teenage Londoner. We were in the sports hall, which I'm pretty sure is bigger than the one at my old school, and the arbiters were across the hall in some sort of theatre room. The prize ceremony was in some sort of auditorium, which we also didn't have at my old school.
Tony Buzan, incidentally, was hugely enthusiastic about the setting, and said so all weekend. I feel that I should report this, out of fairness, since I like to characterise him in this blog as someone who insists on opulent luxury wherever he goes, and he didn't give me a single chance to do that. Maybe next time...
Which brings me on to applauding all the people who ran the event! Phil Chambers didn't get a namecheck in last Thursday's blog because he was stuck in traffic, but he ran everything with his usual efficiency and making-sure-nothing-goes-wrongism. Jennifer Goddard, likewise, was running around non-stop with pieces of paper that probably had important things on them, and although she was showing serious signs of stress by Sunday, she never (as far as I know) physically assaulted anyone. Chris Day ran the electronics and acted as DJ at the prizegiving with his usual mix of triumphant music - we got a brief burst of "Star Trekkin'" by The Firm at one point, before he quickly cut it off, so I'd like to know what else he's got on that playlist.
Dominic O'Brien was in charge of anti-cheating, as always, although I don't think there was any cheating to be anti. He implied that there were hidden cameras watching our every move, which seemed even more implausible than usual in the giant sports hall with big empty walls and high ceilings...
Idriz Zogaj, Kranthi Raj, Andy Fong and Angel Lai were also supervising and coordinating all the happenings, and there was a whole roomful of arbiters marking papers in the back - they were all locked away and only allowed out, blinking in the natural light, for the speed cards, but they included a couple of people interested in competing in the future and bolstering the ranks of British competitors. I'll announce details of the Friendly / Cambridge Memory Championship 2013 before too long.
And so to the results! As usual, you have to consolidate different websites to find out what happened, but the situation's improved now that the World Memory Statistics site has a page for the complete results instead of splitting it into adult, junior and kids pages. Memocamp has the more user-friendly all-on-one-page summary, but you have to bear in mind that various people have the wrong country's flag next to their name, and Yi Zhiqin's names & faces score is attributed to "Takesi-sawai" by mistake.
I think that mistake might have been on the score printouts at the championship, but I'm not sure. In any case, I think "Takesi" was supposed to have been there, but wasn't, so his name will have been on the spreadsheets. Incidentally, the approved transliteration of that name is "Takeshi", and you shouldn't use a hyphen.
Here's the final standings, with notes on whatever that name reminds me of:
1 Johannes Mallow Germany 8413
2 Simon Reinhard Germany 8344
Hannes just slightly had the edge all weekend - on the second day, when he won all four disciplines, he pulled out into a big lead, but then Simon had some of his favourite events on day three, getting big scores on the words and spoken numbers, meaning it was still all to play for at the speed cards, where Simon is by some distance the world's best. In the end, neither of them got a pack correct on the first trial (actually, practically no-one did), and Simon's 27.21 seconds wasn't quite enough to overhaul Johannes with his 42.19. I think that's the closest finish in World Memory Championship history!
3 Jonas von Essen Sweden 6692
The Swedish team came equipped with a film crew and a band of miscellaneous supporters who made sure their memorisers were cheered louder than anyone else. Jonas was fighting for third all the way through, but stayed ahead of Christian and Boris with the kind of scores that would have won the championship a few years ago. He's probably just going to improve in years to come, too...
4 Boris Konrad Germany 6446
5 Christian Schäfer Germany 6199
Completing a German domination of the top five. Boris overhauled Christian on the final day, and also moved back up into the top ten of the world rankings - finally displacing Astrid Plessl, my rival from the olden days who hasn't competed since 2004. This has the interesting effect of making the world's top 10 an all-male affair. Come on, memory women of the world, get to the competitions and strike a blow for equality!
Meanwhile, Tony was greatly improved in his pronunciation of foreign names this year, and had even learned the word "Deutschland", but he still got Christian's surname wrong.
6 Ben Pridmore England 5472
It went about as well as I could have expected with no training. At the prizegiving, my knees hurt - they get stiff if I stay sitting down with bent legs for too long, and I've never had that problem before at prize ceremonies, because I'm usually up and down to the stage, getting top-three-in-the-discipline prizes. This year all I got was a joint-third in the binary digits.
7 Nelson Dellis USA 5273
Team USA were accompanied by a film crew of two young women following Nelson around with a camera. There was also a guy from the company that's aiming to film the both of us next year for the delayed feature film. Hopefully I'll be more impressive for the cameras in 2013, although I can see I'll have to go some just to stay ahead of the likes of Nelson.
8 Ola Kåre Risa Norway 5099
And Ola, too. He might well have been ahead of me and Nelson both, if he'd managed to get a time in speed cards. And he uses the "Ben System" with pride, so there you go!
9 Erwin G. Balines Philippines 4779
10 Mark Anthony P. Castaneda Philippines 4703
Team Philippines were the big new success story of the competition - Erwin was consistently good across all ten disciplines, and Mark Anthony (which is a great name, by the way) had the highest score in spoken numbers - high scores in all three trials, in fact!
11 Marwin Wallonius Sweden 4609
Team Sweden came second, with Marwin and Mattias backing up Jonas. Maybe they can stop the Germans winning by miles and miles, next time?
12 Yudi Lesmana Indonesia 4069
You know, the internet says that Yudi and I met at the 2003 world championship in Malaysia, but I didn't remember that, and apparently nor did he, because we talked to each other as if we'd never met in real life before...
13 James Paterson Wales 3844
Wales is a separate country in the memory world. This is a recent innovation, but apparently it's being strictly enforced.
14 Li Kam Fung Hong Kong 3819
So is Hong Kong. I don't know if the Chinese government would approve.
15 Mattias Ribbing Sweden 3813
16 Annalena Fischer Germany 3715
17 Konstantin Skudler Germany 3667
18 Saswat Satapathy India 3495
Konstantin was the top junior, not far ahead of Saswat. Amusingly, Tony forgot to announce the junior winners at the prize ceremony - Dominic and Phil corrected his other lapses of memory during the lengthy event, but nobody noticed that little slip.
19 Tobiasz Boral Poland 3399
The Polish team were another nation that did much better here than they ever have before. It really is getting more multinational!
20 Jürgen Petersen Germany 3255
21 Carsten Diete Germany 3197
So many Germans... we have to muster a big British team some day.
22 Sri Vyshnavi Yarlagadda India 3040
Third-best junior, and outright winner of the names and faces, which caused some amusement when the prize ceremony gave the medals to the three best adults and the three best juniors, then had to swap them half an hour later when someone remembered it's not supposed to be 'best adults', it's 'best everybody' and extra prizes for juniors.
23 Li Hua Xi Rui China 2994
Her name was written on the score printouts at the championship as LI HUA Xi Rui, and sort of semi-corrected on the website to LI Hua Xi Rui. Someone likes capitals. I'm not an expert on Chinese names, but aren't they usually two or three words, not four? I should have asked her that.
24 Dong Xun China 2828
Top "kid". There were only four competitors who fit into that age category, but the prize ceremony still got three of them up on the stage for the certificates from each of the ten disciplines. But, like the juniors, not for the overall prizes.
25 Ma Yunfeng China 2821
26 Matteo Salvo Italy 2809
I can recognise Matteo on sight now - Jonas, too! See, I'm improving!
27 Rajendra Jain India 2725
Darned if I can remember anything about Raj's physical appearance off the top of my head, though. I'd know him if I saw him, maybe...
28 Mark Aarøe Nissen Denmark 2550
29 Christopher E Carandang Philippines 2530
Christopher spent a lot of time rounding up the entire population of the Philippines to have their photo taken with me. I think it's a cunning scheme to blind me with flashbulbs.
30 Rick de Jong Netherlands 2494
31 Bartlomiej Boral Poland 2476
32 Brad Zupp USA 2433
33 Ni Ziqiang China 2416
34 Xu Jingcheng China 2406
35 Joachim Andersson Sweden 2392
36 Roberto M. Racasa Philippines 2391
37 Chan Chi Wa Hong Kong 2289
38 Jamyla D. Lambunao Philippines 2277
39 Anne Reulke Germany 2249
40 Joona Aapeli Marjakangas Finland 2115
41 Anne Bernadette D. Bonita Philippines 2093
42 Lakshman Dongari India 2063
43 Tansel Ali Australia 2051
Tansel was mainly here to accompany Todd Sampson and the film crew that were following him. They were particularly impressed by my eccentricity - I'm a natural star, you know. It's the odd socks. Everyone loved them this year, though I've always worn them, except when I was wearing the Swedish ones that were a present from Idriz.
44 Hu Xisheng China 1991
45 Malte Godbersen Germany 1927
46 Lu Ming China 1863
47 Christopher Beeg Germany 1861
48 Jakob Krautloher Germany 1852
49 Timo Sprekeler Germany 1787
50 Søren Damtoft Denmark 1769
51 Axel J. Tabernilla Philippines 1721
52 Princess Grace N. Mendoza Philippines 1579
53 Ramyasree Yarlagadda India 1554
54 Mücahit Aköz Turkey 1457
55 Cristine Barao Philippines 1398
56 Divya Radhakrishnan India 1330
57 Pierre Berbinau France 1310
There still might be a French championship at some point in the near future. Jérôme couldn't make it to London at the last minute, but we still had the slightly out-of-practice Pierre, making what is becoming his traditional once-every-three-years appearance at a memory championship. Still, the possibility does exist of bridging that strange memory-free gap between England and Germany, and getting regular events there too!
58 Luis Angel Echeverria USA 1210
59 Hui Xin Khoo Malaysia 1193
60 Ian Roi Spencer A. Betiong Philippines 1064
61 Jørgen Fogh Denmark 1022
62 Martin Mwaka England 1018
63 Blessie Mae Ayalde Philippines 885
64 Sean Kelly Ireland 820
Another comeback kid, having last competed in 1998. You know, I always go on about all the young people at memory competitions nowadays, but there were quite a lot of competitors over the age of forty, too!
65 Yi Zhiqin China 740
66 Afzal Khan England 641
67 Lam Tin Lok Hong Kong 534
68 Wang Dexin China 512
69 Ryan S. Smith England 454
70 Thomas Niranjan Kumar India 247
71 Yuuta Tanaka Japan 83
72 Todd Sampson Australia 33
Todd came here to memorise a pack of cards for the TV cameras, he didn't take part in any other disciplines.
72 competitors is down on the last couple of years, but that's because we didn't have the army of Chinese - in terms of countries represented, we're improving. Next year, who knows where it'll be. I quite like the idea of the Philippines, or Mongolia. Tony said seven countries had expressed interest, and then reeled off a list of eight different places, although I don't know if anyone anywhere has really seriously considered placing an "official bid". I'd be quite happy with Lilian Baylis again!
Sunday, December 16, 2012
I take it back
The prize ceremony was long, but a lot less so than usual! Instead of calling everyone onto the stage to give them a certificate confirming that they were there, Tony handed them out randomly to people and had them mingle and present the certificates to each other. Brilliant idea, and sums up this year's world championship - it was a lot less formal and pretentious, and a lot more fun!
Okay, full report coming up in the next couple of days, but just one thing to remember before you all assume I'm over the hill - in 2004, Gunther came 9th, then he won the world championship three years later. AND he was older than me!
Okay, full report coming up in the next couple of days, but just one thing to remember before you all assume I'm over the hill - in 2004, Gunther came 9th, then he won the world championship three years later. AND he was older than me!
Just a quickie
Before I go back to the prizegiving ceremony - those things tend to go on all night, and then I'll want to go straight to bed and not get up until Tuesday - congratulations to Johannes Mallow on winning his first World Memory Championship! Congratulations to Simon Reinhard too, who was close behind him all the way!
Haven't seen the full results yet, but congratulations in no particular order to Jonas von Essen, Boris Konrad and Christian Schäfer, who took the next three places, and I'm pretty sure I ended up sixth.
Enormous thanks to everyone who helped run the competition, it was great, and everything went really smoothly and well! I'll name-check everyone who needs congratulating the next time I blog, but well done everyone!
Haven't seen the full results yet, but congratulations in no particular order to Jonas von Essen, Boris Konrad and Christian Schäfer, who took the next three places, and I'm pretty sure I ended up sixth.
Enormous thanks to everyone who helped run the competition, it was great, and everything went really smoothly and well! I'll name-check everyone who needs congratulating the next time I blog, but well done everyone!
Saturday, December 15, 2012
A bit more ludicrous stupidity
The results from yesterday's events came out like I expected - 56 in names, 3090 in binary and 1529 in hour numbers. I'm not exactly setting the world on fire here. Today I struggled my way through 225 abstract images, and probably made a fair few mistakes. In speed numbers I reverted to the mindset I had back in 2004 or so - I did a safe 240 in the first trial, then tried 360 in the second. My when-I've-been-training norm these days is a safe 360 then a risky 480. I got the 240, but then didn't improve in the second attempt.
Historic dates came in between the two trials - they've finally made that change, which saves a lot of time, since the rule is that we have to get the results of the first trial before starting the second (in accordance with WMC tradition, we started about an hour late and got later as the day went on, but at least we saved a bit of time with the speed numbers!) - and that went quite terribly for me; I read through them at my usual speed, and realised after a minute or so that I wasn't remembering anything. I think I got a score of sixty-something.
Finally, in hour cards, I'd brought 36 packs, and was thinking about attempting them all (an approach that Ed Cooke memorably described as "ludicrously stupid" in The Mentalists, back in 2007, when I'd actually done some practice) but when I'd got through about 24 I knew I was reaching my limit. I went on and tried 30, because really, what kind of memory champion only attempts 24, but the recall was full of holes - I think I wrote down 18 complete packs, and there were probably a few mistakes in those.
But enough about me, let's talk about some of the other competitors! It's still anybody's guess which of Simon Reinhard and Johannes Mallow will take the gold medal - they were neck and neck after three disciplines. The Germans, as always, have brought a huge and scarily talented team, also including Christian Schäfer (fighting for third place with Jonas von Essen) and Boris Konrad. Team England isn't quite so well-represented - it's me, nearly-newcomer Martin Mwaka, totally-newcomer Mohammed Afzal Khan and returning-newcomer (he competed once before, in 2008 or 2009) Ryan Smith. James Paterson is also there, but apparently Wales is officially a separate entity in memory circles nowadays.
Watch out also for Jonas and Marwin from Sweden - the Swedes have their own cheerleaders (Idriz, who's arbiting instead of competing this year, and other supporters) to shout woo-hoo whenever a Swede's name is read out, and also a strong team that also includes Mattias Ribbing (wearing a smart suit instead of the scruffy clothes favoured by most competitors) and Joachim Andersson. They look favourites for second place in the team competition.
Also of note, Ola Kåre Risa is producing some great scores again on behalf of Norway, and Erwin Balines of the Philippines was in the top ten in all three of the first day's disciplines! Someone suggested a world championship over there in the future, which would be awesome. There's certainly enough enthusiastic people there! Team USA, spearheaded by Nelson Dellis, are going well too.
Finally, it's worth congratulating Sri Vyshnavi Yarlagadda, a junior from India, who got the highest score in names and faces - another natural talent who might go far?
There's also a little article in the Times today, if you've still got time to go out and get one. It doesn't really say all that much about the competition, but there's a photo of me and a full report on the fact that I wear non-matching socks, so what more could you want?
Historic dates came in between the two trials - they've finally made that change, which saves a lot of time, since the rule is that we have to get the results of the first trial before starting the second (in accordance with WMC tradition, we started about an hour late and got later as the day went on, but at least we saved a bit of time with the speed numbers!) - and that went quite terribly for me; I read through them at my usual speed, and realised after a minute or so that I wasn't remembering anything. I think I got a score of sixty-something.
Finally, in hour cards, I'd brought 36 packs, and was thinking about attempting them all (an approach that Ed Cooke memorably described as "ludicrously stupid" in The Mentalists, back in 2007, when I'd actually done some practice) but when I'd got through about 24 I knew I was reaching my limit. I went on and tried 30, because really, what kind of memory champion only attempts 24, but the recall was full of holes - I think I wrote down 18 complete packs, and there were probably a few mistakes in those.
But enough about me, let's talk about some of the other competitors! It's still anybody's guess which of Simon Reinhard and Johannes Mallow will take the gold medal - they were neck and neck after three disciplines. The Germans, as always, have brought a huge and scarily talented team, also including Christian Schäfer (fighting for third place with Jonas von Essen) and Boris Konrad. Team England isn't quite so well-represented - it's me, nearly-newcomer Martin Mwaka, totally-newcomer Mohammed Afzal Khan and returning-newcomer (he competed once before, in 2008 or 2009) Ryan Smith. James Paterson is also there, but apparently Wales is officially a separate entity in memory circles nowadays.
Watch out also for Jonas and Marwin from Sweden - the Swedes have their own cheerleaders (Idriz, who's arbiting instead of competing this year, and other supporters) to shout woo-hoo whenever a Swede's name is read out, and also a strong team that also includes Mattias Ribbing (wearing a smart suit instead of the scruffy clothes favoured by most competitors) and Joachim Andersson. They look favourites for second place in the team competition.
Also of note, Ola Kåre Risa is producing some great scores again on behalf of Norway, and Erwin Balines of the Philippines was in the top ten in all three of the first day's disciplines! Someone suggested a world championship over there in the future, which would be awesome. There's certainly enough enthusiastic people there! Team USA, spearheaded by Nelson Dellis, are going well too.
Finally, it's worth congratulating Sri Vyshnavi Yarlagadda, a junior from India, who got the highest score in names and faces - another natural talent who might go far?
There's also a little article in the Times today, if you've still got time to go out and get one. It doesn't really say all that much about the competition, but there's a photo of me and a full report on the fact that I wear non-matching socks, so what more could you want?
Friday, December 14, 2012
I really should have trained just a little bit
It's not quite so much fun being at the WMC when you know you're not going to win. Next year, proper training! Definitely!
Anyway, we haven't had any scores yet, but names and faces went as well for me as it always does, nuff said. Binary digits I really felt the effects of not having practiced it on paper for a very long time - I had a lot more gaps than usual, and a score probably in the low 3000s. Hour numbers, I was already feeling brain-frazzled, so I played it safe and only tried 8 journeys's worth - 8x234 digits, whatever that is - and although I filled them all in in the recall, there are bound to be plenty of mistakes. I'd be delighted with a score of 1500.
Tomorrow - abstract images, speed numbers, historic dates and hour cards. I'm not hopeful of doing anything special.
But of course, in all seriousness, the fun of the world championship isn't in the winning, it's the people there! And there are a whole lot of old and new friends to talk to - I haven't seen Tansel Ali since 2003, so I can be forgiven for not remembering what he looks like. I can perhaps not be forgiving for forgetting more recent acquaintances, but at least it's something to tell the journalists - there are quite a few of them buzzing around, Autralians, English and Swedes, and they all liked my eccentric views and non-matching socks.
The Swedes wanted me to talk about sex and wiolence. Apparently everyone's been telling them that's an important part of visual imagery for memorising numbers and things - it isn't really that big a part of mine, so I think my mental stories must be much more peaceful and nice than everyone else's. Yay!
Anyway, we haven't had any scores yet, but names and faces went as well for me as it always does, nuff said. Binary digits I really felt the effects of not having practiced it on paper for a very long time - I had a lot more gaps than usual, and a score probably in the low 3000s. Hour numbers, I was already feeling brain-frazzled, so I played it safe and only tried 8 journeys's worth - 8x234 digits, whatever that is - and although I filled them all in in the recall, there are bound to be plenty of mistakes. I'd be delighted with a score of 1500.
Tomorrow - abstract images, speed numbers, historic dates and hour cards. I'm not hopeful of doing anything special.
But of course, in all seriousness, the fun of the world championship isn't in the winning, it's the people there! And there are a whole lot of old and new friends to talk to - I haven't seen Tansel Ali since 2003, so I can be forgiven for not remembering what he looks like. I can perhaps not be forgiving for forgetting more recent acquaintances, but at least it's something to tell the journalists - there are quite a few of them buzzing around, Autralians, English and Swedes, and they all liked my eccentric views and non-matching socks.
The Swedes wanted me to talk about sex and wiolence. Apparently everyone's been telling them that's an important part of visual imagery for memorising numbers and things - it isn't really that big a part of mine, so I think my mental stories must be much more peaceful and nice than everyone else's. Yay!
Thursday, December 13, 2012
The World Memory Championships are go!
We've had the competitor briefing, at least. It's in a school sports hall, complete with basketball nets, cricket nets, vaulting horses and the like, so at least we won't get bored if we want a break from memorising. Huge praise should go to Dominic, Chris, Jennifer, Gaby, Nathalie and whoever I've forgotten for running everything smoothly. Being me, I was most entertained by Chris constantly adjusting the volume and mix on the microphone while Jennifer was trying to talk.
So tomorrow it's names & faces, binary and hour numbers - funnily enough, the three long events from the Memoriad, so I can't complain that I've had no practice at all. Except for names and faces, I did better than I expected in Turkey three weeks ago, so maybe I'll do the same tomorrow? Who knows? But since I'm going into the competition with no expectations, I suppose remembering a single digit will be a pleasant surprise!
For a rather better preview, please go and check out Johann Randall Abrina's blog!
So tomorrow it's names & faces, binary and hour numbers - funnily enough, the three long events from the Memoriad, so I can't complain that I've had no practice at all. Except for names and faces, I did better than I expected in Turkey three weeks ago, so maybe I'll do the same tomorrow? Who knows? But since I'm going into the competition with no expectations, I suppose remembering a single digit will be a pleasant surprise!
For a rather better preview, please go and check out Johann Randall Abrina's blog!
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