The Excel games have gone extreme, tossing four top competitors into urban wilds around the world in a one-off battle, which reigning champion Diarmuid Early won at the last minute. 

Irish phenom Early captured the win in the Microsoft Excel World Championship’s (MEWC) inaugural Landmark Battle over the weekend after a last-minute comeback that saw him take down Andrew Ngai by a mere 40 points (1060 to 1020) in the 30-minute contest. Jaq Kennedy and Nicolas Micot made up the back half of the chart.

The conceit of the whole one-off contest, which was co-sponsored by hardware manufacturer Asus, was to stick the four contestants in the wild around four landmarks, forcing them to deal with weather, potentially flaky internet, and - shudder - the public who might wander over and question what exactly they were doing. Early, who now resides in New York, competed overlooking the Statue of Liberty; Kennedy near Big Ben; Micot at the Eiffel Tower; and Ngai overlooking Sydney Harbour.

Hardware for the contest was provided by Asus, which doled out ExpertBook Ultras and wireless portable second screens to each contestant. MEWC said the contest was inspired by the remote work undertaken by many modern professionals, who increasingly work “across client sites, airports, cafés, co-working spaces, and remote locations, instead of behind a desk in an office.”

The competition goes back to 2021. It was a 2022 broadcast on ESPN, however, that made competitive Excel a … um … popular thing to watch. 

MEWC competitions pit Excel experts against each other to solve complex problems designed ahead of time by other Excel experts. In the 2025 World Championship in Las Vegas, where Early beat Ngai to win the trophy, puzzles included doing things like solving a jigsaw puzzle using Excel. The 2022 competition broadcast on ESPN included the spreadsheet platformer Modelario, as well as tasks involving a yacht regatta and slot machine-style games.

The one-off Landmark Battle took its inspiration from Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days, and saw the quartet of competitors racing through a seven-part puzzle to decipher the fastest travel route for a group of spreadsheet-bound characters intent on duplicating Phileas Fogg’s feat. 

According to MEWC, Early came from behind to win the contest using his signature strategy of “core-first, bonus-later,” which involves solving all the core challenges of a puzzle before returning after completion to see how many bonus questions he can pull off. Having been deployed to the field with nothing but a cameraman and the laptop they were working on, none of the competitors were aware of their opponents' live scores, meaning that Early won without knowing how close the contest had become.

Qualifiers for the 2026 world championship are ongoing, and Early is an early favorite so far. Six of nine Road to Las Vegas qualifier matches have taken place so far, and Early has won three of them. ®