USA Memory Championship

Yes, I know. This sounds beyond nerdy. But it’s so nerdy that it comes full circle and becomes cool again. Okay, maybe not, but most of us have an inner nerd and this is like mecca for that. Better than Spelling Bees. Better than comic cons.
It’s actually a rather small group of 52 contestants from all over the US that spend the first half of the day qualifying for the 7 finalist seats. The afternoon (which is more audience friendly) consists of several events beginning with the word memorization. In this event, each of the 7 finalists is handed a list of 250 words to memorize in 15 mins. And then the finalists are shuffled in order and then going down the line, words are revealed until someone doesn’t remember the word that comes next. And so goes elimination of 2 finalists.
The next event is the Tea Party where 5 strangers tell the finalists about themselves: name, bithdate, address, pets, favorite foods, favorite car. And then randomly some of those strangers are called back up and the contestants have to reiterate the details pertaining to that specific person. Two more contestants are eliminated.
And then lastly, there are three contestants left. The last trick: memorizing not one but two deck of cards that have been mixed. The last three contestant just start spewing those cards faster than the emcee can turn them over. And that is finally where the winner is declared.
This was the first time I’ve ever attended this event. It’s actually quite fascinating and I’d highly recommend catching the afternoon portion of the program at least, especially since it’s free of charge.