Groovy shoes

By far the coolest part of the whole experiment is that I got a pair of custom-painted shoes, bespoke designs just for me, by Greg Itahara! They're extremely cool, and have a cartoon squirrel and a brain on them. What more could anyone want?

I got these shoes just last week, as part of the advance promotion for the film, which also involved me teaching a masterclass in memory to a bunch of media people and other miscellaneous people associated with the documentary (Geoff, my personal trainer, was there).

I have to admit, that green lighting makes me look awesome. And everyone seemed appreciative of my "masterclass" in how to memorise words, names and images in the Memory League style. (Yes, I taught people how to memorise names. They were all better at it than I am.)

And everyone had a go on Memory League and loved it! I'm hopeful that we've won a few converts to competitive memorising, either directly or indirectly.

Annotations

 If you've watched Mind Games: The Experiment and are wondering about the little details you see, here's a FAQ*

*At the time of writing, I have had very few questions asked me even once, let alone frequently. Most of these are totally made up.

00:00:30 Nice outfit, shame about the shoes

That's my first training session - brand new sports gear, hadn't got my Asics trainers yet. I exclusively wore those velcro-fastening slip-on shoes until I got used to the trainers. Now I can't wear anything but the professional Asics footwear! Also, bending your leg like Geoff's doing is beyond my capabilities.

What's with all the branding? 

ASICS is the brand. It stands for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano. Which is almost but not quite what Juvenal said, but MSICS would just sound silly. They gave me lots of shoes and other clothing.

00:00:54 What's that at the left of the screen?

That's a shelf of video tapes belonging to my brother. Can't quite make out which ones,unfortunately.

What's on your shirt? I can't make it out!

The black one with the red circle says "I'M HUGE IN JAPAN"; the blue one with black writing says "I AM FROM SPACE"

00:01:20 Are you playing chess underwater?

Yes. It's part of the Mind Sports Olympiad, I was persuaded to go along and give it a go, but I think I need more practice (without a camera crew present) before I become a serious player. Also, I need some kind of prescription goggles to allow me to see the board underwater. I played one game and dropped out, it was all a bit of a disaster, which is probably why there's only one brief clip in the whole documentary.

00:01:41 Bandana?

Yes, red bandana. It was very sunny, I have a bald head, my trademark hat is very hot in the sun and also not prone to staying on my head when I'm exercising.

00:01:55 What are all your books?

I can't really list them all here. There's a lot of classics, a lot of comics. See how many you can recognise from the spines! The one they really show a lot, sticking out from the bookcase, is Wonder Woman newspaper comics.

Are those Mega Drive and Master System games? And an old-fashioned television? And VCR?

Yes. I live in the past. I've got a more up-to-date telly, and a Nintendo Switch, off-screen.

Wish you could afford a table for the floor lamp.

Two lamps normally live on the floor in that corner of my living room. This isn't a case of TV people moving things around and putting them in strange places - in fact, they picked one of them up and put it somewhere more sensible, to make the lighting work!

Do you have to wear shorts all the time?

Yes. My hairy legs and knobbly knees need the fresh air.

00:02:03 When was this?

It's old footage, isn't it? It's the world memory championship 2007, as recorded for The Mentalists. That would be the moment Ed described as me, "ludicrously stupidly", attempting to memorise 36 packs of cards in an hour and not succeeding. 

00:02:59 Where's that athletics track?

Halesowen. There's one a short walk away from my house, but apparently it was cheaper for us to go to the one at Halesowen. One time when they wanted to film, someone started playing music on the speakers, and when the TV people asked them to stop, the people in the gym laughed and turned it up louder. Then when they realised it was TV people and not some random nerds complaining about the noise, a hugely muscular man came out and apologised, turned the music off and chatted about the whole project. We really did go there at the crack of dawn. I was working during normal daytime hours.

00:03:04 Everyone else on this documentary is so good-looking and you're the only one who takes his shirt off?

The public wants to see this kind of thing, I promise you. If you don't, you're just weird.

00:03:53 You can only do three push-ups?

I did five, thank you very much. But yes, that was awful. There was a time in my younger days when I could do twenty at a time, and I was confident ten would be simple enough to start with. Now, though, I can do thirty!

00:07:02 Twenty-two moves?

Now, if I'd done the three-disc version and then the four-disc version, and added the scores together, that would have made 22. But I'm certain I (and by extension probably everyone else) only did three discs. These numbers may have come from some other test, but I'm not sure which one it might have been.

00:10:37 Is that where you live?

No. It's a beautiful establishing shot of beautiful England. Then we cut to inside my real house, which is much shabbier. We're watching The Mentalists on my old-fashioned video tape.

00:10:52 The Broons?

And Oor Wullie. Much-loved, long-running newspaper comic strips. Those are my collection of collected editions.

00:10:53 The Guinness Book of Records?

Yes, the 2014 edition, because that's the one that had a picture of me in it. I'm not in the book any more. I don't normally sit there looking at it, while a video of my past glories plays in the background. That makes me look rather sad and nostalgic...

00:11:13 Booyeah!

That's me breaking the 30-second barrier for memorising a pack of cards, in 2007! A great moment! And James Ponder in the background, just like he was in that clip of the world championship! He should get royalties. For that matter, so should I!

00:11:20 Nice photo.

That's the original hat, too. November 2003. This again is footage from The Mentalists. As is the cards scene afterwards, and the "legendary" bit - which I normally only say with some kind of prefatory comment that makes it clear I'm not serious.

00:11:42 An eighteen year absence.

So, yes, I was absent from memory competitions when I won the world championship in 2008 and 2009. That's how good I used to be! But see the previous blog entry - it's a mistake, but not as inaccurate as I was thinking at first.

00:11:45 Books

The Wonder Woman book mentioned earlier is blurry in the foreground. You can see Mickey Mouse newspaper comics and a Magic Eye book more clearly.

00:12:04 Are you the man being questioned?

It's an unrelated article. That's me with the cool moustache, though.

00:12:15 Very sceptical.

Amusingly, this bit was filmed right at the end, because they didn't have useable footage of me saying that (though I said it all the time, apparently off-camera, when we were starting up), so it's a tiny bit fake. But never mind!

00:21:25 Ahhh, England.

Pretty, isn't it? The camera crew travelled around the local area to find nice bits to film.

00:21:57 What's on that shirt?

"I am the man who arranges the blocks"

00:22:17 Lost a memory competition to a monkey?

A chimpanzee, actually. And I demand a rematch. Search for Ayumu.

00:22:41 Where are we now?

Oxford Street, London - the big Asics shop! Definitely unfamiliar territory for me.

00:23:58 An IQ of 159!

See, that sounds very boastful. This sentence was prefaced by saying that I took a Mensa IQ test at the age of 17 or 18, and for a short while went around telling everyone my score, and having to explain that it was a good score to get.

00:25:00 The Ben System

Yes, the first two cards there are indeed a shark, but the next two are a bar, and I guess me saying that must have been edited out.

00:25:45 The hat!

Yes, this documentary is sadly lacking in hat footage! It just doesn't seem to go with the athletic gear, somehow...

00:26:13 That's a lot of comics.

And that's only a small corner of my comic collection. It's very poorly organised - I drag piles of comics out to the front when I'm in the mood to read them. What we can see here are complete runs of Alpha Flight, Tom Strong, Metamorpho, Avengers Forever, House of X/Powers of X, New Warriors and Maison Ikkoku, and not-quite-complete runs of Micronauts and Defenders. I recommend reading all of them! Ooh, and then it pans down a bit to Runaways. Read that one, too!

00:26:17 What are those?

If you don't recognise He-Man figures then there's really no hope for you, I'm afraid.

00:26:36 Fish, chips and mushy peas

Yes, see the previous post. I didn't actually eat this; it's stage-dressing. I'd just had lunch, and then we ordered another meal so I could say the things I'd been discussing off-camera again. And so I immediately veered into an entirely different subject. I'm terrible to work with.

00:34:15 Forever Redditch!

A sneaky bit of advertising for the town I did most of my walking in!

00:35:24 What's the app?

It's called Runkeeper, and I really do recommend it!

00:47:00 The mid-study assessment

Yes, I really did get a lot better at it! I surprised myself - towards the end of the twelve minutes I said I wasn't likely to reach those flags, and I actually got well past them. My walking speed has outpaced my wildest expectations! As I recall, I did 18 push-ups in that session, and the dialogue saying 20 was from another filming session. I did 22 at the final assessment, in the pouring rain, which didn't make it into the final film.

00:51:00 The Mind Sports Olympiad!

It isn't really the biggest day in the memory sports calendar, but it is still very cool! That's the shirt designed by Phill Ash for the world championship 2014. And yes, Donatello is the coolest turtle. That's Daniel Evans, Susanne Hippauf, Nick Papadopulos, Klaus Jerrold, Ewelina Preś, and I think we get at least a glimpse of Daniele Vergine. I don't know who told me his name and I couldn't understand it. It might have been Dan Evans. I'm very bad with names, even of people I've known for decades.

00:54:30 What was your time?

I don't remember. It was very slow. That's me making sure Nick knows what to say and do - he does, of course, know perfectly, but I get very possessive about this competition even when I'm not arbiting.

00:56:25 What's on that shirt?

That's the lucky shirt - Pocket Dragons! This one has been drawn on and signed on the sleeve by Real Musgrave, creator of Pocket Dragons.

00:56:33 Who won the gold and silver?

I think it's shocking not to show it. Or for that matter the other medal-winners! One of these days, I'll manage to get another proper documentary made about memory competitions, not just about me doing exercises! Suffice to say Ewelina, Susanne, Daniele and everyone else were much better than me all round.

01:10:09 The results are staggering

I don't really know how any of those things are measured. You'd have to ask Brendon and his gang. But I'm sure there was a lot of science behind it.

01:12:30 A 5k race??

Yes indeed. Well, a parkrun. I walked, but I did 5K in around 45 minutes. Which is a fast walk, and probably wasn't quite completely the slowest time on the day! I'll probably do it again, when the weather's nice!

Did you meet the other mental athletes?

Not until after filming. Kassa and Ryoei at a publicity shoot a while before the competition, Sherry not until last week.

Are you all going to be world champions?

Probably, some day soon. Except me, maybe.

Errata

 The thing about a documentary is that you take remarks out of context and string them together to make a good story, but I rather worry it might give the wrong impression to people who actually know me. I'm a little concerned that when memory sport people hear me saying I'm a legend in the memory sport community and everyone always flocks around me for autographs, shorn of the surrounding jocular dialogue, they might think I'm more than a little big-headed. And I'm disturbingly certain that my late mother's partner (who I don't think reads this blog but who might well end up watching the documentary) will think I'm being horribly dismissive of my mother when I only give her the most slighting of passing references as a preface to talking about my father...

In fact, since I'm in such an E. Nesbit mood lately, I think an Oswald Bastable quote would be extremely relevant at this juncture: "Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all."

Having got that out of the way, let's talk about what I'm eating in that scene. I don't like mushy peas, as everybody should know, and would never order them in a pub. What actually happened was that I had a pub lunch with the film crew - I can't even remember what I had, but it certainly wouldn't involve mushy peas - and then they bought me another meal to pretend to eat while I chatted to the camera, and chose fish and chips because it looks so very nice and English. It wasn't intended to be a chat to the camera all about my dad, but that's how it turned out in the end, with no prompting at all from the director, and I rather like it when unintentional stuff like that turns out to be everyone's favourite part of the film. It's just a shame there was that little pile of mushy peas sitting there the whole time, making people think I eat them. Horrible stuff. Garden peas, if you're serving me fish and chips, everybody!

And then there's the matter of my getting on the podium. You see, while my physical transformation was an absolutely wonderful, miraculous result of the experiment, the documentary really wanted to back it up with me going to a memory competition and showing a similarly improved performance. And the problem with that is that there WEREN'T any memory competitions! I don't honestly know if the WMSC even exists any more (the only one I'm even vaguely in touch with is Phil, and last I heard he'd become Chief Arbiter Emeritus, which is a fancy-shmancy way of saying he's no longer actually doing it), and the IAM had rather gone into hibernation during the pandemic, though it's picking back up again now. I would have had to go far overseas to take part in a real memory competition - the only thing we had over here was the MSO memory event, which I traditionally organise myself (although, again, not since before covid).

Nobody else being able to take charge of the whole thing, we contrived a sort of halfway house where I put the little event together and took part in it too, and the documentary managed to make a big thing about my competing at the MSO memory competition for the first time in ages. Indeed, they got a tiny bit mixed up - what I said (and repeated myself often, explaining it in full detail) to the researcher was that the last time I actually competed in memory at the Mind Sports Olympiad was in 2004, which led the documentary to say I'd been out of the whole memory sports scene for 18 years.

I laughed at that, but then I explained that, although I'd been competing fairly regularly up to 2019, it was 2009 when I last considered myself totally seriously in training for memory competitions. And that really was THIRTEEN YEARS! Perhaps the documentary wasn't so laughably wrong after all...

But let's talk about my aim being to 'get on the podium'. I have NEVER gone into anything with the intention of only finishing third, and I hope I never will! Let's face it, that was how it ended, and so the script said that's what I was aiming to do from the start. In fact, I'm still aiming for the real goal, of actually WINNING competitions!

(Similarly, Kassa points out that he's beaten hundreds of grand masters - this is a common thing to happen when one is a high-ranking international master, although god knows I've never come close to winning a game against a GM or IM when I've played them. His aim, which he's getting ever closer to achieving soon, is to become a GM himself)

And what on earth was that bit about my taking 22 moves to do the Tower of Hanoi? They must have got a number mixed up somewhere, because I only did the basic three-disc version, and I did it in seven moves, of course. You don't get to my age and level of associating with nerdy puzzle-lovers without learning how to do the Tower of Hanoi.

Still, the important point to take away from Mind Games: The Experiment is that I most certainly improved my physical performance, probably also improved my general mental state, and got some really cool trainers too!

Mind Games - The Experiment

Watch it, if at all possible, on Prime Video! Then come back here and read all about it from my perspective!

The whole crazy adventure started in March last year, with an email from Etan, the big boss of the Mind Sports Olympiad. He told me, and a lot of other regular MSO competitors, that someone was "producing a documentary about exceptional people which includes the mind sports olympiad and I've recommended you. Might each of you be willing to have a chat with her?"

I said yes, of course, as I always do in this kind of situation. I'd just been thinking it had been ages since anyone asked me to be on TV! But when I'd learned a bit more about the documentary, it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to be my kind of thing.

We are making a feature documentary film where we dive into the ever- expanding world of esports and mind games, witnessing these increasingly popular global events . 

 

Serious players and specialists in their own fields will allow our cameras to follow them in preparation for the biggest tournament of their lives.   But the question is whether they can improve their already amazing game by margins and become even better at what they do. 

 

Funded by a sports company who want to test the ancient proverb (and their own motto), healthy body equals healthy mind, there will be an added layer of preparation for these big competitions. 

By dedicating more time in their diaries to physical exercise & personal training, could this set these competitors apart? 

 

Over our film period we will see how their brain function is affected by more regular physicality.   

 

Behind the film a team of scientists are testing the principal on 100 people around the world and, working this data into our narrative, we’ll finally be able to answer, prove or disprove the ancient principal at the heart of this film.  

Healthy body equals healthy mind, indeed. Exactly the kind of thing I've scoffed at all these years when people like Tony Buzan espoused it. Also, Juvenal didn't even SAY that - he said people should aim to have both, but not that one leads to the other. And also also, it's "principle", not "principal". I laughed.

But I couldn't help thinking it might be fun, and I replied to that effect - perfectly candidly, saying "I'm really not the physical training/exercise type myself - quite apart from being 45 years old with dodgy knees, in fact I'm famous for telling everyone that a junk-food diet is the key to success in mind sports! But on the other hand, I'm quite keen to get back into serious training for memory competitions, and it would be interesting and different to see if a disciplined combined physical and mental training routine could help me catch up with the likes of Andrea (who's already pretty fit and healthy, I think)." And I went on to say that there was no chance at all of me beating him, nor much chance of there being an MSO memory competition that I didn't organise myself. Full disclosure of how unsuitable I was as a subject for the documentary!

So, naturally, they signed me up for the study straight away. And yes, I like making documentaries. Especially when the crew turn out to be as obliging as this one was. I was impressed with them right from the start - they sent me a whole lot of Asics sports gear, and asked me to go into a shop somewhere before filming started to have a 'gait analysis' to determine what kind of running shoes would work best for me. I can't run. Dodgy knees; it's an actual medical condition and not an excuse. But I replied "I'm going to look and feel a complete twit going into a sports shop and asking for a gait analysis, whatever that may be. Do you want to get it on film?" And they did, and it turned out to be one of the best sequences in the finished documentary!

Knowing that the producers had got a handle on my eccentricity right from the start, I was happy to throw myself into whatever they wanted me to do. Some of it worked, some of it didn't, but it was all a bit of a laugh. They did take me to a physio at one point, suspecting the whole dodgy knee thing was all in my head, and he told them it wasn't, so nyah. That bit didn't get into the finished product.

But by then I'd been introduced to my personal trainer, Geoff, and been given my exercise regime! I looked at it and laughed scornfully again [at the regime, not at Geoff; he looks really cool and sporty and impressive], thinking there was no way any of this was going to happen. It was expecting me to walk, several times a week, for gradually increasing lengths of time. In new trainers that felt like I was walking on stilts and liable to fall down at any moment. I was still recovering from a knee injury when we started, and the thought of building up to a 50-minute walk and climactic 5km to finish with seemed very silly.

But the trainers soon started to feel very comfortable, the walking was surprisingly enjoyable, and the 'strength training' exercises too. And like I said in the documentary, I had an app that told me I was getting better at it every time, as well as some good old-fashioned paper printouts on which I could circle every completed session. Before long, what had seemed like something I would simply never do became something I was really enjoying!

So yes, it's true. Ben Pridmore, that denouncer of people who say physical exercise helps you win memory competitions, has changed his mind. I mean, not that it helped me win a memory competition, as such, or improved my mental performance in measurable ways - quite the reverse, actually, since I was so excited by the training regime I couldn't summon up any real enthusiasm for memory stuff - but it unquestionably DID put me in a more positive frame of mind, and in that sense has certainly helped my memory-sports performance going forwards! From now on, it's a nicely balanced physical and mental regime in preparation for tournaments in 2023 and beyond!

Following this post, we'll have a list of "errata" (which I wrote first, because picking holes in things is always the most fun), and "annotations" of interesting points in the documentary, followed by pictures of the very coolest thing I got out of the whole experience, so please stay tuned to this blog in the coming days!

Amazon Prime, Thursday. Don't miss it!

 What happens when four mind-sports people, three of whom are cool, good-looking and in great physical shape, try an experiment to see if physical training can improve their mental performance?

You can find out by watching "Mind Games - The Experiment" on Prime Video. Available on Thursday. Watch it, and read my blog for further details!