The least expected World Cup is played in Excel spreadsheets

For some, a nightmare. For others, their office companion for decades. But there are also human beings who see the Microsoft Excel, he software most used spreadsheet in history, such as the center of the most exciting tournament of all. A few days ago the Excel World Championship was played, which crowned an Australian as champion but it was not without tension and controversy.

Created in 1985 as a program for Apple computers, its arrival two years later for Windows was the platform for Excel became the obligatory reference in spreadsheets. Over time it added very innovative functions that today we assimilate as totally everyday, such as editing and formatting fonts and intelligent cell counting.

There is an old Internet meme that claims that the global financial system ultimately rests on an Excel spreadsheet… and maybe it’s true. What happens is that, for most mortals, its green logo is synonymous with work and, therefore, imagining it as a source of entertainment generates rejection. But there are those who see infinite possibilities for fun in a spreadsheet. Ten days ago the Excel World Championship was held in Las Vegas, followed passionately by hundreds of people in the Hyper-X Arena and broadcast live to the entire world on the ESPN signal.

This is a competition in which eight players per round receive a large amount of data and a set of instructions. Contestants must create formulas and subsets to process the data in the shortest time possible. Every seven and a half minutes, the person with the lowest score is eliminated.

The big favorite was Andrew Ngai, baptized by his fans as “The Annihilator”, a 36-year-old Australian actuary who had won the last two editions. However, at mid-game, the scoreboards showed him third, behind computer science doctor Diarmuid Early, known as the “LeBron James” of Excel, and Brandon “B-Money” Moyer.

Maddened, The Annihilator began to frantically check his calculations and answers… how could it be that he had been eliminated just like that? Had I put a decimal wrong? Or perhaps he had rounded a figure without taking it into account? Where was the error?

A technical review showed that it was all a calculation error in the competition table, a true cybernetic irony that gave it the necessary touch of spice for this type of confrontation. Once the glitch was resolved, Ngai was able to celebrate his new title as the best data processor in the world.

The passion that Excel can awaken is such that this is not the only tournament in the world: there is also the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship, which has the official blessing of the company that created Windows and which had an Argentine as the best Latin American player. . Juan Pablo Brea, 27 years old, is an industrial engineer and was baptized as “the Messi of Excel.” A title perhaps somewhat exaggerated, but one year before Qatar 2022 it serves to make us smile.