LAS VEGAS—Credit union CFOs and accountants have a new hero—a three-time winner of the Excel World Championship. Yes, it’s a competition involving the use of Excel spreadsheets—has been won by Australian Andrew “the Annihilator” Ngai for the third year in a row.
During the event at the HyperX Arena at the Luxor Hotel & Casino, “the beancounters of the world finally got the respect they deserve, with a crowd of financial-modeling nerds blowing off mundane Vegas distractions such as a U2 concert, an NBA game, and the rodeo, to watch Excel athletes sit before computers onstage and ‘spreadsheet’ like there’s no tomorrow,” the New York Times in its review.
According to the Times, the event involved razzle and dazzle, an “are-you-ready-to-rumble” style announcer, color commentary by Jon Acampora and Oz du Soleil, both Excel trainers, and an appearance by Diarmuid Early, a computer-science Ph.D. known as the “LeBron James of Excel.”
The Times said spreadsheet fans could also find exciting training courses, such as “Make Your Data Spill the Beans with Dynamic Array Formulas,” and another that dove into ”Pivot tables!”
Three 30-Minute Sessions
The Excel championship took place over three 30-minute sessions that included both “high drama and hexadecimals” that the audience was able to watch on a giant screen as they “marveled at the rich data types, tables, monster functions, and the dreaded #ref error flashing before them.”
The report said reigning champion Ngai, an actuary by profession, took on 15 challengers in the live event, was soon caught up in a controversy.
“To amp up the pressure, championship rules dictated that the person with the lowest score 7.5 minutes into a semifinal would be eliminated, and as the clock ticked past that crucial mark, the champ found himself in an unusual position: dead last on the board,” the Times reported. “To groans from the crowd, Ngai was tapped out of the show, and even he appeared baffled. Further confusing matters, after he was removed, his score on the board jumped from 75 to 515 and then reverted to 75. Later, organizers blamed a computer glitch for the erroneous score, and after a dramatic huddle allowed Ngai, the annihilator, back in. They declined to blame Clippy, a now-discarded animated Microsoft Office virtual assistant reviled by many users but nonetheless beloved by Saturday’s Vegas crowd.”
6 Math Problems
In the big final match, there were six math problems, related to spaceship construction and asteroid mining, and five bonus problems, with the lowest-scoring contestants dropped out of the competition every five minutes until only three remained at the very end, the report explained.
“To the uninitiated, the event was a little like watching people sweat while taking the SATs; the main stage screen resembled a jumble of keystrokes and numbers, and some problems were so sophisticated they stumped even the contestants,” the report further noted.
In the end, Ngai won the top prize, which comes with a 10-inch-tall three-dimensional replica of Clippy plus a $3,000 prize.
In the event you’ve exhausted your entertainment options, a video of the event can be found here.
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