Ben Pridmore
Encyclopedia
Achievements
Pridmore is the 2009 World Memory Champion, a title he also won in 2004 and 2008. From DerbyDerby
Derby , is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands region of England. It lies upon the banks of the River Derwent and is located in the south of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. In the 2001 census, the population of the city was 233,700, whilst that of the Derby Urban Area was 229,407...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Pridmore achieved this by winning a 10-discipline competition, the World Memory Championship, which has taken place every year since 1991.
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. This record was beaten in 2010 by German memory athlete and lawyer Simon Reinhard. He is ranked number one in the world ranking list for Memory Sports. Pridmore's victory at the 2009 World Championship was his eighth consecutive memory competition win since coming second at the 2007 World Championship.
Besides memory sports he is famous for his mental calculation
Mental calculation
Mental calculation comprises arithmetical calculations using only the human brain, with no help from calculators, computers, or pen and paper. People use mental calculation when computing tools are not available, when it is faster than other means of calculation , or in a competition context...
skills and took part in the Mental Calculation World Cup
Mental Calculation World Cup
-Mental Calculation World Cup 2004:The first Mental Calculation World Cup was held in Annaberg-Buchholz, Germany on 30 October 2004. There were 17 participants from 10 countries.The World Cup involved the following contests :...
in 2004, 2006 and 2010. He has also won several medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad
Mind Sports Organisation
The Mind Sports Organisation is an association for promoting mental-skill games including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has annually organised in England a multi-sport competition, the Mind Sports Olympiad main event.The MSO was founded in conjunction with...
including becoming the 2001 World Champion at the ten disciplined mind sport
Mind sport
A Mind Sport is a sport or a game of skill where the mentalcomponent is much more significant than the physical. The official bodies that use the term have over 500 million registered users.- History of the term :...
competition the decamentathlon
Decamentathlon
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...
.
He featured in the music video for DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow
Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...
's single "Scale It Back".
Method
Like most memory experts, he creates a mental story, comprises a sequence of images that he has permanently memorised as representing number groups, playing card pairs etc. Pridmore often envisages a story around his old school, Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, HorncastleQueen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle
Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle, is a selective, co-educational, foundation status Grammar School and Sixth Form College in the market town of Horncastle, Lincolnshire. In 2003, Queen Elizabeth's gained joint specialist status for science and mathematics inpartnership with Banovallum...
as the framework for these memory sequences.