Revenge of the nerds: Inside the Microsoft Excel Championships

The Obsessives is a series spotlighting the world’s most competitive underground sports, as well as the grassroots champions and communities that make them.

30 competitors sit shoulder to shoulder, eyes locked on monitors, fingers flying. Only the frantic clatter of keystrokes cuts through the silence. Spreadsheets pulse on a giant screen, formulae unfurling across colour-coded cells.

“60 seconds to go,” the commentator booms. ​“Will anyone pull out the Hail Mary move, the RANDBETWEEN function” – said like it’s a wrestling finisher – ​“to try score a couple more points?”

Welcome to Round One of the Microsoft Excel UK Championships. 

To most, Excel is that boring tool they’re forced to use in the worst parts of their job. 

Here, it’s a battlefield.

The stakes are high: today’s winner earns an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to represent the UK at the Microsoft Excel World Championships, a high-octane, three-day tournament inside the 30,000-square-foot HyperX Esports Arena right on the Strip.

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There, players are introduced WWE-style, names echoing across the arena as they’re made to march through a smoke-filled, neon-lit hype tunnel — whether they like it or not. Once they hit the stage, every move is beamed onto a 50-foot LED screen and broadcast worldwide on ESPN as they face off for $5,000 and the global crown. 

But victory doesn’t come easy – to win that golden ticket, competitors must score the most points across three gruelling rounds, each built around a custom ​“case” to solve. Every case has seven levels, each level harder than the last. 

You could hear a pin drop in the room, but on the YouTube live stream, it’s getting wild. Viewers around the world watch four featured players’ screens and faces side by side, and hundreds of comments flood in for Vaughan Grandin, one of the chosen ones. He’s an unusual suspect in the world of competitive spreadsheets – turns out he’s a bagpiper in a heavy metal band and his fans storm the chat with war cries:

“VAUUGGHHHAAANNN!”

”GO ON VAUGHAN, EAT YOUR ENEMIES!”

”🎵 VAUGHAN, VAUGHAN, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE, YOU CODE CELLS SUPERBLY 🎵”

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Despite the fanfare, Vaughan finishes Round One in 22^nd place – not quite Vegas-bound, but still impressive considering everyone here survived three online showdowns just to get in the room.

“An average Excel user might manage Level One,” says Excel evangelist Giles Male, one of today’s organisers and author of the first case. ​“Once you hit Level Three and above, it gets unbelievably hard. The top players are so brilliant, we call them ​‘The Titans’.” Giles, who also serves as a ringside commentator at the Vegas finals, talks about The Titans with near-mythic reverence.

At first, rock star Vaughan might have seemed like he doesn’t fit the mould of a desk-bound, math-obsessed spreadsheet nerd. Yet as Giles – my guide through today’s spectacle – introduces me to other players, it turns out the mould is what’s out of place.

Giles himself is no exception. One of just 150 people worldwide knighted by Microsoft as an ​“Excel MVP” (Most Valuable Professional) by night, he becomes ​“The Humble MVP”, a fur-coat-adorned, rapping alter ego who drops spreadsheet-themed music videos and stirs up beef on LinkedIn over formulae (his favourite feud: the old guard’s beloved VLOOKUP formula vs. the newer, faster XLOOKUP – think trusty Ford Fiesta vs a self-driving Tesla). ​“I don’t want to do the classic humble brag bollocks,” he explains. ​“so went all-out cocky instead.”

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Naturally, he wrote Round One’s case as a tribute to himself: ​‘The Humble MVP’ puts competitors in charge of his upcoming music video, where they have to sort, price and categorise his fur coats, then schedule and choreograph an entire dance crew. The final level was so complex, Giles admits he couldn’t finish it himself in the allocated time.

For someone who makes spreadsheet-themed rap videos, you might expect him to live mostly online. In reality, he’s an endurance junkie, completing punishing races from Ironman UK to the 88km (55 miles) Comrades Ultra in South Africa last year, testing his athleticism with the same grit he brings to Excel.

He’s not the only one proving Excel champions can be as tough in body as they are in mind. Enter Hadyn Wiseman, one of today’s favourites to win. On paper, he’s what you’d expect: an M&A specialist at a FTSE 100 firm, using Excel to navigate deals worth millions. Away from the desk, though, he’s a competitive powerlifter who once ranked third nationally in his weight class, and a trained gymnast who held the Guinness World Record for most backflips in a minute – 20 of them. ​“We’ve got a baby as well,” he adds casually. ​“So time management can be a bit tricky.”

Before each competition, he runs a diagnostic on himself: a single game of online chess. ​“I can usually tell from that how my brain’s working,” he says, and adjusts his approach accordingly. His best finish so far has been seventh in the world, and his athlete’s mindset gives him an edge. ​“Under time pressure, you can fall back on default behaviours,” Hadyn explains. ​“Like a boxer might revert to slipping punches automatically.”

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What truly sets Hadyn apart are his ​‘lambdas’. They might sound like cuddly farm animals, but on the Excel battlefield, lambdas are deadly tools – custom-built formulae that let you summon tailor-made shortcuts with a single command, rather than rebuilding from scratch every time. Not every player uses them; at the top level, though, they’re becoming hard to compete without. Hadyn’s are legendary on the circuit, helping him complete in seconds what others take minutes to solve. To him, they’re more than just weapons for battle. ​“The more efficient I get at Excel,” he says, ​“the more time I win back – at work, with my family, everywhere.”

One admirer of Hadyn’s lambda mastery is fellow competitor Lara Holding-Jones, who regularly studies his YouTube tutorials. ​“I’ve beaten Hadyn on occasion,” she grins. ​“It’s a wild day when that happens.” 

Her background is in HR, not finance or engineering. Yet she’s quickly climbed to become one of the UK’s top players, despite still sometimes needing to convince herself she belongs. ​“Whenever I win, I realise I’m not as stupid as I feel most days,” she says, half-laughing, half-earnest. 

Her dedication is clear – her first ever Excel match clashed with her cousin and best friend’s wedding, but that didn’t stop her. ​“It was a 7am battle, thankfully!” she recalls. ​“So I quickly plugged away at it, got dressed, and went straight to the wedding.”

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Since then, she’s gone all in, spending Sundays training her fingers to commit shortcuts to muscle memory, and rewatching hours of case footage like a footballer analysing tape. Her biggest breakthrough this year was mental, not technical. ​“I’ve done a lot of work on staying calm, figuring out how to approach a question without panicking. A lot of the time, it’s just stepping back, and literally taking a breather.” To get in the zone, she listens to Ben Howard – a small ritual that quiets the noise.

In Round Two, it worked. Lara landed seventh, just behind Hadyn in sixth – impressive, considering what they were up against. 

Because the real villain in Round Two wasn’t another player. It was the case itself: Right Royal Battle (Part II), designed by Harry Watson, one of the world’s most prolific case writers. The fact it’s a sequel says it all; Part I is already infamous among competitive Excel-ers. 

Harry, who works in data modelling by day, treats each case with care. ​“These cases are like fine wine,” he says. ​“They require a lot of input, a lot of testing. The story has to flow.” 

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This one took 80 drafts to perfect. Opening with the warning: ​“Beware, lest ye be slain by the Excel dragon”, players had to calculate troop sizes from emoji battalions, army movements across 14^th-century France, and hidden weapon power-ups.

He especially loves designing cases that test the players’ lambda skills. ​“If you use lambdas properly, it shows you’ve really understood the problem,” he says. ​“It’s perhaps the most evil twist,” he chuckles. And yet his cases are beloved. ​“I like to hide little jokes in the text,” he says. ​“If someone finishes early, they can read through and laugh.” No one finished Round Two early.

And certainly nobody was laughing as they entered Round Three: Malice in Wonderland, a fever dream written by Harry Gross, an AI engineer whose cases ​“strike fear worldwide”, I’m told. Players had to crack riddles, avoid execution by the Queen, and navigate a hedge maze hiding homicidal playing cards. Even the most experienced competitors were left blinking at their screens.

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As the last keystrokes fell, the room held its breath, and the final scoreboard was revealed. Vaughan placed 24^th – not a podium finish, but still a fan favourite. Lara took 13^th, edging out more seasoned players, and Hadyn powered into 4^th, just shy of the top three.

The undisputed champion was Ha Dang, a self-taught accountant from Scunthorpe who trained via YouTube. A newcomer to the scene, he delivered a flawless run across all three rounds, cutting through the chaos with lightning speed and nerves of steel. Now, he’s earned his place on the world stage, and this winter, will walk through smoke cannons into a neon-lit arena the size of a football pitch to compete for the global title. 

Today wasn’t just a win for Ha. It was a breakthrough moment for the UK Excel scene – the first time the country has held its own national championship. And much of that is down to Jaq Kennedy, who founded the UK chapter last year, sketching out plans during an airport layover after Vegas. ​“It’s become a part-time job,” she laughs. ​“With no pay.” 

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What drives her, and the rest of the volunteer team, is passion. Passion for Excel, but also for building a community where everyone feels like they belong. Jaq is particularly aware that women are underrepresented at the top levels of competition, but that’s changing fast. ​“We’ve made a point of avoiding language that would make anyone feel excluded,” she says. ​“We want this to feel open. All abilities, all backgrounds.” One of the group’s proudest achievements is a women-only Discord where players share tips, train, and compete together every Friday night. ​“Many of the most passionate players I know are women,” Jaq says. ​“And when they start training – really training – they climb.”

Following suit, national chapters have sprung up in Germany, Brazil, Chile and beyond, each aiming to send winners to the World Championships, each with their own communities of athletes, artists and dreamers who just happen to express themselves through spreadsheets.

So the next time you curse at rows and columns that won’t cooperate, think of Hadyn turning that same frustration into fuel. Remember Lara, pushing through panic to find focus. And picture Ha Dang, rising from Scunthorpe to the roar of Vegas. Because these aren’t just cells – they’re proving grounds, and the gateway to a world where even the most ordinary of tasks can become an arena for glory.

Ginnia Cheng is a freelance journalist and comedienne. Follow her on Instagram.

Katya Ilina is a freelance photographer. Follow her on Instagram.

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