The Gold Split Newsletter - Week #14

The Gold Split offers a free, weekly digest of news from the world of speedrunning and beyond.

This Spotlight is all about speedrunning Microsoft Excel and was featured in this week's issue. The full post includes more news, briefly, as well as this week's top times and a fun fact. Check it out HERE.

Spotlight: ExcelObstacleCourse

This week we’re taking a break from console differences, glitches, and even categories. It’s all about raw numbers, accuracy, and execution. If you frequent the r/speedrun subreddit, you will probably have come across a post by the person in the spotlight today: ExcelObstacleCourse

As the name might suggest, they’re all about spreadsheets in general, and Excel especially, and have found a unique niche in speedrunning puzzles and obstacles created in the beloved spreadsheet software.

ExcelObstacleCourse is a data scientist, self-proclaimed Excel junkie, and old-school gamer, who started their gaming journey with the first Nintendo consoles, playing games like F-Zero, Mario Kart, Super Punch Out and Blast Corps, always trying to beat their previous records.

They combined their job with the hobby of going fast and pushing boundaries for the first time 15 years ago:

The idea to speedrun Excel came from a training "Excel obstacle course" I came up with about 15 years ago to teach people Excel shortcuts at work. We had everyone practice and compete in a conference room at the end of 30 days with gift cards for 1st, 2nd and 3rd spot. Everyone got faster at Excel and had a great time at the competition.

Quite different from older games, Excel is constantly evolving and has received many changes over the years. But any necessary adjustments were always a welcome challenge, and by now, ExcelObstacleCourse feels like they have mastered all the basic keyboard commands and practice them regularly to solve the challenges they create. Just like 15 years ago, their main motivation is still for more people to pick up the craft and potentially even beat their records.

Currently, they keep track of basic leaderboards and a library of videos on their Discord, and anybody wanting to join can simply message them (there will be some links below). Despite all efforts, Speedrun.com has so far rejected implementing leaderboards for Excel, with the reason being that it’s “not a game”. But in my opinion, this would only hold up if the site didn’t also host IRL activities like reading and baking. There’s an insane number of games without a single run on their leaderboards, and if there’s space for those there should also be space for an active yet small community around standardized Excel puzzles.

Some of you might be familiar with competitive Excel in the form of the Financial Modelling World Cup. I asked ExcelObstacleCourse how the necessary skillset differs from speedrunning the puzzles and whether or not they ever considered competing:

This differs from the Financial Modeling competition because it involves no financial knowledge, no formula writing, just basic hotkeys and Alt-commands to 'clean' or 'transform' data. I would say it benefits data analysts of all types, as well as 'processors' who grind spreadsheets and small data daily. I have no plans to compete in the FMWC, but I haven't researched too much into it.

By now, I’m certain that many of you can’t wait to launch Excel and improve your skills or even pick up the obstacle course speedruns. You’re in luck because ExcelObstacleCourse has a few great videos on their YouTube channel to help with just that. If you do give it a shot, tag them, and you’ll likely get a shoutout back!

Thank you again to ExcelObstacleCourse for readily answering my questions! You can find them on TikTok, where most of their livestreams take place, as well as on YouTube and other platforms.

Thank you for reading! If you're curious about more of this week's news or would even consider subscribing to the newsletter, you'll find the full post over HERE.

Finding new stories to cover can be challenging. I encourage you to think about what happened recently in the communities you are a part of. If there are any stories, articles, glitches, events, or other topics I should be taking a look at, go ahead and submit them here or in the Gold Split Discord! 📨