Excel world champion solves ‘Warcraft’ spreadsheet to win crown

The Microsoft Excel World Championship handed the 2024 trophy to a beaming, bearded Canadian: Michael Jarman, whose spreadsheet skills topped all others in a heated competition in Las Vegas this week.

Jarman, a modelling director at Operis (financial, not swimsuit) also walked away with a $5,000 check and the appreciative cheers of those gathered in the HyperX arena in Las Vegas. Players included familiar faces such as former champion Andrew Ngai, Diarmuid Early and a host of established Excel, um, athletes who ran out of the “HyperX Hype Tunnel,” some puffing more than others.

Twelve finalists progressed to the finals, which was predicated upon a familiar, nerdy game: World of Warcraft. (Eve Online, or “Excel in Space,” probably would have an even better choice). The players were asked to essentially “manage” a team of Horde players as they progressed through a simulated game — capping off the adventure with a simulated raid on the Molten Core dungeon. Each quest granted a certain amount of XP and gold, and took some amount of time to complete.

For each “level,” the players were required to keep track of various stats like experience points (XP) and gold to begin with, then a game stat like armor, intelligence, or agility. You also get stats on the character’s ability to heal or do damage over time.

Simply managing those traits as the player characters progressed generated points. However, the organizers assumed that each Excel finalist would max out the available points, so they created a series of bonus questions such as tracking the total health pool of all the players, the total experience points, and even nerdy Excel questions like tracking the number of “W” letters in all of the available quests.

And there was another twist, too: The players with the lowest score were progressively eliminated every five minutes so that they had to act (and code) fast.

But in the end only man could become champion…Michael Jarman. “All those years of training have come to this moment,” the announcers reverently intoned, as the bearded, perspiring Canadian took a bow.

As always, the joy of the Excel World Championship is actually watching nerds work their magic. This year’s seven-hour livestream is up on YouTube, and there’s an added bonus! An incredible, epic theme song that plays on repeat during the break. That’s worth listening to, just by itself.