March 13, 2006

Nerd Off

I had far too much fun in college for this type of competition.

    [Joshua] Foer set a new U.S. record in playing-card recall, where contestants spend five minutes memorizing the order of a deck of cards and then recall as many as possible in a row. He recalled the whole deck in 1 minute, 40 seconds, which is better than he's ever done in practice, he said.

    He was already planning to attend the upcoming World Memory Championship in Malaysia in August -- book research, he said -- but part of the prize for his U.S. win includes a paid flight there to compete.

    "I don’t think I have a chance in the world championship," Foer said. "I can’t imagine going up against these people -- they can memorize a deck of cards in like 30 seconds."

    There was nothing so dramatic at the U.S. Championship, but records were broken in each qualifying event. In the speed-numbers round, where contestants have five minutes to memorize as many randomly-generated numbers in order as they can, finalist Maurice Stoll, of Hurst, Texas, won by breaking his own record with a score of 148.


On a normal day, I can't remember what I had for lunch the previous day!

On the web Posted by AlexC at March 13, 2006 4:30 PM

I feel really good after this. While you were posting it, I was at a neurological exam associated with my clinical trial.

The numbers segment is first grade material, you hear a number every few seconds and you must give the sum, of the last two. It's childish. It's trivial. I haven't got a perfect score yet!

Not quite ready for the card trick.

I once read a compelling article that correlated software productivity to the ability of a developer to memorize long sequences of numbers. I think this is true -- somebody should teach Mr. Foer to write code.

Posted by: jk at March 13, 2006 5:04 PM

So, for how many years have you two been using "more than 4 joints per week?"

Posted by: johngalt at March 14, 2006 4:02 PM

I'll be 46 in May. I find this time of life to be very much like the after effects of drug abuse.

Posted by: jk at March 14, 2006 5:40 PM

How do you know? :-)

Posted by: dagny at March 14, 2006 8:57 PM | What do you think? [4]