Microsoft Excel UK Championships Crowned Its First Winner (huckmag.com)
(Friday October 03, 2025 @05:22PM (msmash)
from the spreadsheet-warfare dept.)
- Reference: 0179638764
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/03/0815211/microsoft-excel-uk-championships-crowned-its-first-winner
- Source link: https://www.huckmag.com/article/microsoft-excel-championships-world-uk-ha-deng-vegas-40-anniversary-obsessives
Ha Dang, a self-taught accountant from Scunthorpe who trained via YouTube, [1]won the inaugural Microsoft Excel UK Championships on September 30. The victory earned him a spot at the Microsoft Excel World Championships in Las Vegas, a three-day tournament inside a 30,000-square-foot esports arena where players compete for $5,000 and are broadcast on ESPN.
Thirty competitors sat shoulder to shoulder through three gruelling rounds of spreadsheet challenges. Each round featured a custom case with seven levels of increasing difficulty. The second round case, Right Royal Battle Part II, took 80 drafts to perfect. Players calculated troop sizes from emoji battalions and army movements across fourteenth-century France. Hadyn Wiseman, who once held the Guinness World Record for most backflips in a minute, placed fourth. Lara Holding-Jones finished thirteenth. Jaq Kennedy founded the UK chapter last year. National chapters have since formed in Germany, Brazil, and Chile.
[1] https://www.huckmag.com/article/microsoft-excel-championships-world-uk-ha-deng-vegas-40-anniversary-obsessives
Thirty competitors sat shoulder to shoulder through three gruelling rounds of spreadsheet challenges. Each round featured a custom case with seven levels of increasing difficulty. The second round case, Right Royal Battle Part II, took 80 drafts to perfect. Players calculated troop sizes from emoji battalions and army movements across fourteenth-century France. Hadyn Wiseman, who once held the Guinness World Record for most backflips in a minute, placed fourth. Lara Holding-Jones finished thirteenth. Jaq Kennedy founded the UK chapter last year. National chapters have since formed in Germany, Brazil, and Chile.
[1] https://www.huckmag.com/article/microsoft-excel-championships-world-uk-ha-deng-vegas-40-anniversary-obsessives
Potential for AI Havesting Paints a Dark Picture (Score:2)
by BrendaEM ( 871664 )
I can't help but be cynical(realistic) about anything like this anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
by Woeful Countenance ( 1160487 )
[1]Scunthorpe? [wikipedia.org] ... Pittsburgh, Miami, Dallas, New Orleans, Scunthorpe! [2]Slowly I turned [youtube.com] ....
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0
really? (Score:5, Insightful)
holy f***, are society's standards for entertainment so low now that and EXCEL competition is sponsored and televised? We're doomed.
Re: really? (Score:2)
Just wait until the AI Clippy Championships get under way! Contestants frantically try to disable the little fucker before he helpfully deletes all their files after misunderstanding some 4 letter words.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd rather watch this than baseball.
Consider the common sentiment that "nerds like baseball because of all the statistics." I'm a math guy and I still think baseball is boring as fuck 95% of the time. I think the most fun I had at a baseball game was drinking and eating popcorn, cheering on a streaker who then got arrested.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And how big was the audience in the "30,000-square-foot esports arena where players compete for $5,000"? Which is not a lot.
Re: really? (Score:2)
Please. People pay good money to watch a dude throw a ball. We've always been doomed.