Ben Pridmore | |
|---|---|
 Pridmore at Memoriad World Mental Olympic 2012 | |
| Born | 14 October 1976 |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Accountant, World Memory Champion |
| Known for | World Memory Champion |
Ben Pridmore (born 14 October 1976) is a former world memory champion, memory sport competitor and accountant.
Pridmore is a three-time World Memory Champion winning the title 2004, 2008 and 2009. [1] From Derby in the United Kingdom, [2] Pridmore achieved this by winning a 10-discipline competition, the World Memory Championship, which has taken place every year since 1991. He has also earned the prestigious title of Master of Memory. [3]
He held the official world record for memorizing the order of a randomly shuffled 52-card deck, and has memorised a pack in a time of 24.68 seconds on television. [4] This record was beaten in 2010 by German memory athlete and lawyer Simon Reinhard. Pridmore's victory at the 2009 World Championship was his eighth consecutive memory competition win since coming second at the 2007 World Championship. He is the title holder for the UK Memory Champion for the years 2007–2011 and 2013 and Welsh Open Memory Champion 2009–2012 and 2014. [3]
Besides memory sports he is famous for his mental calculation skills and took part in the Mental Calculation World Cup in 2004, 2006 and 2010. [5] He has also won several medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad including becoming the 2001 World Champion at the ten disciplined mind sport competition the decamentathlon including also chess and reversi. [6]
He also participated in the Memoriad World Mental Olympics in the year 2012 [7] in Antalya and won one gold medal with the title "Memoriad Speed Cards World Memory Champion".
He is thought to have an IQ of 159 putting him in the genius range. He was prominently featured in the music video for DJ Shadow's single "Scale It Back". [8]
Like most memory experts, he creates a mental story, comprises a sequence of images in a variation of the Mnemonic Major System. In Pridmore's system for cards, two cards are represented as a three-letter word by the first consonant derived from the suits, the vowel from the first card's number, and the final consonant from the second card's number. For example, an ace of hearts and a two of clubs = "fan" with his predetermined letter associations for a total of 2704 unique images. Numbers are represented similarly with the first digit a consonant, vowel, and third consonant respectively meriting 1000 images; binary is the same with chunks of 4 numbers being given a single letter representation and used in the same fashion. [9]
Using these words, Pridmore often creates a story using his old school, Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle as the framework for these memory sequences. [10] This style of memorizing is known as the method of loci, sometimes known as a memory palace.
The major system is a mnemonic technique used to help in memorizing numbers.
The Mind Sports Organisation (MSO) is an association for promoting mind sports including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has annually organised in England a multi-sport competition, the Mind Sports Olympiad.
A mental calculator or human calculator is a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation.
The Decamentathlon is a multi disciplined games event that was created as part of the first Mind Sports Olympiad. It was founded to try to find the best games all-rounder in the world and hence possibly the best games player. It was given a prize fund of £10,000 for the inaugural competition, that equalled that of the highest funded event at the first MSO sponsored by Skandia. However, the other events were spread over multiple playing sessions whereas the Decamentathlon was held over just a single session. This event was initially hailed as the MSO flagship event. Although, the Mind Sports Olympiad's other new event the Pentamind has since become regarded as the more significant event despite not having a fixed format.
A mind sport, is a game of skill based on intellectual ability.
The title mnemonist refers to an individual with the ability to remember and recall unusually long lists of data, such as unfamiliar names, lists of numbers, entries in books, etc. Some mnemonists also memorize texts such as long poems, speeches, or even entire books of fiction or non-fiction. The term is derived from the term mnemonic, which refers to a strategy to support remembering, but not all mnemonists report using mnemonics. Mnemonists may have superior innate ability to recall or remember, in addition to relying on techniques.
The World Memory Championships is an organized competition of memory sports in which competitors memorize as much information as possible within a given period of time. The championship has taken place annually since 1991, with the exception of 1992. The next World Memory Championship will take place in Vashi, Maharashtra, India for the first time. It will take place at 24 to 26 November It was originated by Tony Buzan and co founded by Tony Buzan and Ray Keene. It continues to be organized by the World Memory Sports Council (WMSC), which was jointly founded by Tony Buzan and Ray Keene. In 2016, due to a dispute between some players and the WMSC, the International Association of Memory (IAM) was launched. From 2017 onward, both organizations have hosted their own world championships.
Jan van Koningsveld is a mental calculator.
Johannes Mallow is a German memory sportsman. He is a two-time winner of the World Memory Championships. He studied successfully Communication Technology at the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg and finalized his PhD thesis in 2016 at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He also works as a mind coach and scientific author.
Alberto Coto García is a Spanish mental calculator. He was the world champion in mental calculation from 2008 to 2010.
The Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is an annual international multi-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fund and was described as possibly the biggest games festival ever held.
Gert Schnider is an Austrian professional multi-talented board-game player. In chess he is an International Master, in Go a 5th Dan, in shogi an amateur 5th Dan in Japan and 3rd Dan in Europe, and in Abalone a grandmaster.
Memory sport, sometimes referred to as competitive memory or the mind sport of memory, refers to competitions in which participants attempt to memorize then recall different forms of information, under certain guidelines. The sport has been formally developed since 1991 and features national and international championships. The primary worldwide organizational bodies are the IAM and WMSC.
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything is a nonfiction book by Joshua Foer, first published in 2011. Moonwalking with Einstein debuted at number 3 on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for 8 weeks.
Nelson Charles Dellis is an American memory athlete and consultant. He is a five-time USA Memory Champion, holding the record for most wins of the national memory champion title. He is also one of the co-founders of Memory League. Nelson also runs Climb 4 Memory - a nonprofit which "aims to raise funds and awareness for Alzheimer's disease research through mountain climbs around the world."
The USA Memory Championship is an annual competition that took place every spring in New York City until 2016, and is currently held in Orlando, Florida, after an online qualifier. It was founded by Tony Dottino, President of Dottino Consulting Group, Inc., and Marshall Tarley in 1997. Designed to test the limits of the human brain, the USA Memory Championship is an organized competition in which Memory Athletes (MAs) attempt to memorize as much information as possible in events such as Names and Faces, Cards, Random Numbers, Images, and guest information at a fictional "Tea Party". Since 2018, there is also often an event called Long-Term Memory in which the MAs are given reams of data a month in advance about a wide variety of subjects such as the Periodic Table of the Elements, Space Shuttle missions, NFL Hall-of-Famers, etc. Participation is open to US citizens who are at least 12 years of age. The competition currently consists of 9 total events, 5 of which are online qualifying events, while the last four events are held at a live event to determine the champion.
Sri Vyshnavi Yarlagadda is an International Grandmaster of Memory. She attained her career-best rank no. 2 in October 2013 in Names and Faces event by the World Memory Sports Council. She is the first Indian to win an open category medal at the World Memory Championships. She achieved this feat by winning the gold medal in Names and Faces event at the 20th World Memory Championship 2011 on 7 December 2011 in Guangzhou, China.
Alex Mullen is an American memory competitor, three-time world memory champion, and physician. The first American to win the world title, he won for three consecutive years the 2015, 2016, and 2017 World Memory Championships and held the IAM world No. 1 ranking from 2016-2019. He was also the 2022 and 2023 Memory League World Champion. Along with his wife, he runs Mullen Memory - a nonprofit which "provides free resources exploring memory palaces as learning tools."
Memory League is a memory competition platform originally founded and created by Nelson Dellis and Simon Orton under the name Extreme Memory Tournament (XMT).
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