The Excel superstars throw down in Vegas
An elite handful of analysts, actuaries, and accountants have mastered Excel, arguably the most important software in the business world.
少数精英分析师、精算师和会计师已经掌握了 Excel，这可以说是商业界最重要的软件。
So what do they do in Vegas?
那么他们在维加斯做什么呢？
They open a spreadsheet.
他们打开一个电子表格。
t’s It’s It’s happy hour in Las Vegas, and the MGM Grand casino is crawling with people.
这是拉斯维加斯的欢乐时光，米高梅大赌场挤满了人。
The National Finals Rodeo is in town, the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament is underway, the Raiders play on Sunday, and the U2 residency is going strong at the giant Sphere, so it seems everyone in every bar and at every slot machine is looking forward to something.
全国牛仔竞技总决赛即将在城里举行，NBA 首届赛季内锦标赛正在进行中，突袭者队将于周日比赛，而 U2 驻地在巨大的 Sphere 上也将如火如荼地进行，所以似乎每个酒吧和每台老虎机上的每个人都在期待着一些事情。
(And wearing a cowboy hat.) Even for a town built on nonstop buzz, this qualifies as a uniquely eventful weekend.
（还戴着牛仔帽。）即使对于一个热闹非凡的小镇来说，这也算得上是一个独特而多事的周末。
But I’d wager that if you wanted to see the most exciting drama happening at the MGM on this Friday night, you’d have to walk through the casino and look for the small sign advertising something called The Active Cell.
但我敢打赌，如果你想在本周五晚上看到米高梅发生的最激动人心的戏剧，你就必须穿过赌场，寻找一个名为“The Active Cell”的小广告牌。
This is the site of the play-in round for the Excel World Championship, and it starts in five minutes.
这里是Excel世界锦标赛的入围赛场地，还有五分钟就开始了。
There are 27 people here to take part in this event (28 registered, but one evidently chickened out before we started), which will send its top eight finishers to tomorrow night’s finals.
这里有 27 人参加本次活动（28 人报名，但其中一位显然在开始前就畏缩了），前八名选手将进入明晚的决赛。
There, one person will be crowned the Excel World Champion, which comes with a trophy and a championship belt and the ability to spend the next 12 months bragging about being officially the world’s best spreadsheeter.
在那里，一个人将被加冕为 Excel 世界冠军，他将获得一座奖杯和一条冠军腰带，并且能够在接下来的 12 个月内正式吹嘘自己是世界上最好的电子表格制作者。
Eight people have already qualified for the finals; some of today’s 27 contestants lost in those qualifying rounds, others just showed up last-minute in hopes of a comeback.
目前已有八人晋级决赛；今天的 27 名参赛者中，有一些在预选赛中落败，还有一些在最后一刻才出现，希望能够东山再起。
The room is set up with four rows and three columns of tables, each one draped in a black tablecloth and covered in power strips, laptops, and the occasional notepad.
房间里摆着四行三列的桌子，每张桌子都铺着黑色桌布，上面布满了电源板、笔记本电脑，偶尔还有记事本。
There’s a long table with coffee in the back, and over the two days we’ve been in this room, carts have occasionally wheeled in with cookies, queso dip, and at one point, surprisingly delicious churros.
后面有一张长桌，里面放着咖啡，在我们待在这个房间的两天里，推车偶尔会推过来，里面装着饼干、奶酪酱，有时还有令人惊讶的美味油条。
The unofficial dress code is business casual, the overall vibe somewhere between summer camp and business conference.
非官方着装要求是商务休闲装，整体氛围介于夏令营和商务会议之间。
Now the room is quieter, more focused.
现在房间更安静，更专注。
26 of the contestants are furiously setting up their workspaces.
26 名参赛者正在紧张地布置他们的工作空间。
They plug in their computers, clean up their areas, and refill their beverages.
他们插上电脑，清理自己的区域，并补充饮料。
A number of players reach into their bags and pull out an external mouse and keyboard — everyone in the room has strong opinions on brands and features, but all agree that what you really need is a keyboard with function keys separate from media keys, and then to turn those media keys into more function keys so you can work even faster.
许多玩家把手伸进包里，拿出外接鼠标和键盘——房间里的每个人都对品牌和功能有强烈的看法，但所有人都同意，你真正需要的是一个功能键与媒体键分开的键盘，然后将这些媒体键变成更多功能键，这样你就可以更快地工作。
And then there’s me.
然后就是我。
I’m the 27th competitor, and I’m both the only person in the room using a Mac and the only person who has no idea what I’m doing.
我是第 27 位参赛者，我是房间里唯一使用 Mac 的人，也是唯一不知道自己在做什么的人。
I’ve spent the last two days in this room with this group, as they’ve taught each other new Excel tricks and compared notes on the state of the art in the world’s most important piece of software.
过去两天我和这个团队一起在这个房间里度过，他们互相教授 Excel 的新技巧，并就世界上最重要的软件的最新技术进行交流。
They’ve been debating VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP and teaching each other how to use the MOD function.
他们一直在争论VLOOKUP和XLOOKUP并互相教如何使用MOD函数。
I’ve been desperately trying to get my app to update on the MGM’s Wi-Fi.
我一直在拼命尝试让我的应用程序在米高梅的 Wi-Fi 上更新。
Image caption: The competitive Excel setup is simple: computer, mouse, keyboard.
图片说明：Excel 竞赛的设置很简单：计算机、鼠标、键盘。
Every athlete has their favorites.
每个运动员都有自己的最爱。
At 6PM on the dot, Andrew Grigolyunovich, the founder and CEO of the Financial Modeling World Cup, the organization hosting these championships, takes the modular stage in the ballroom.
下午 6 点准时，金融建模世界杯（主办这些锦标赛的组织）的创始人兼首席执行官 Andrew Grigolyunovich 在宴会厅登上了模块化舞台。
He loads an unlisted YouTube link, which begins explaining today’s challenge, known as a “case.” It’s a puzzle called “Potions Master,” and it goes roughly like this: You’re training to be a potions master in Excelburg, but you’re terrible at it.
他加载了一个未公开的 YouTube 链接，该链接开始解释今天的挑战，称为“案例”。这是一个名为“魔药大师”的谜题，内容大致是这样的：你在 Excelburg 接受训练，成为一名魔药大师，但你的表现却很糟糕。
You have a number of ingredients, each of which has a certain number of associated points; your goal is to get the most points in each potion before it explodes, which it does based on how much of a white ingredient you’ve added.
您有多种成分，每种成分都有一定数量的关联点；你的目标是在每种药水爆炸之前获得最多的分数，这取决于你添加了多少白色成分。
The Potions Master case, like so many of the puzzles conquered by these competitive Excelers, is not particularly complicated.
魔药大师的案例，就像这些竞争卓越者所解决的许多难题一样，并不是特别复杂。
This is a flashier, faster, deliberately more arcade-y version of spreadsheeting, more like trying to win 10 simultaneous games of chess on easy mode rather than painstakingly taking on a grandmaster.
这是电子表格的一个更华丽、更快、更街机化的版本，更像是试图在简单模式下同时赢得 10 场国际象棋比赛，而不是煞费苦心地与一位大师较量。
If you like, you can solve the whole thing manually: figure out when the white number gets too high, count the total points until that spot, then double-check it because it’s a lot of numbers, and eventually answer the first question.
如果你愿意，你可以手动解决整个问题：找出白色数字何时变得太高，计算直到该点的总分，然后仔细检查它，因为它有很多数字，并最终回答第一个问题。
That’s my strategy, and I think I get it right.
这就是我的策略，我认为我是对的。
Now there are 119 more, worth a total of 1,500 points, and it’s quickly clear I’m not going to finish in the 30 minutes we’ve been allotted.
现在还有 119 个，总分 1,500 分，很快我就明白我无法在分配的 30 分钟内完成。
While I’m squinting into my 13-inch screen and carefully adding 1s and 3s, the other 26 contestants are whirring through their spreadsheets, using Excel’s built-in formula and data visualization tools to organize and query all that data.
当我眯着眼睛看着 13 英寸的屏幕并小心地添加 1 和 3 时，其他 26 名参赛者正在快速浏览他们的电子表格，使用 Excel 的内置公式和数据可视化工具来组织和查询所有数据。
Everyone in the room seems to have their own way to chew through the ingredient lists and spends the first few minutes turning a mess of numbers and letters into real, proper capital-d Data.
房间里的每个人似乎都有自己的方式来仔细阅读成分列表，并花前几分钟将一堆数字和字母变成真实的、正确的大写数据。
They start answering questions a half-dozen at a time, while I’m still checking my mental math.
他们开始一次回答六个问题，而我仍在检查我的心算。
Almost everybody who participates in competitive Excel will tell you that the app itself will only get you so far.
几乎所有参加 Excel 竞赛的人都会告诉您，该应用程序本身只能帮助您到目前为止。
If you can’t hack the puzzle or figure out what you’re trying to do, it can’t make something out of nothing.
如果你不能破解这个谜题或弄清楚你想要做什么，它就不能无中生有。
Your brain will always matter more than your software.
你的大脑永远比你的软件更重要。
But if you really know how to make Excel sing, there’s simply no more powerful piece of software on the planet for turning a mess of numbers into answers and sense.
但如果您真的知道如何让 Excel 唱歌，那么世界上就没有比它更强大的软件可以将一堆数字转化为答案和意义了。
Competitive Excel has been around for years, but only in a hobbyist way.
Competitive Excel 已经存在很多年了，但只是以业余爱好者的方式存在。
Most of the people in this room full of actuaries, analysts, accountants, and investors play Excel the way I play Scrabble or do the crossword — exercising your brain using tools you understand.
这个房间里的大多数人都是精算师、分析师、会计师和投资者，他们玩 Excel 的方式就像我玩拼字游戏或填字游戏一样 — 使用您理解的工具锻炼您的大脑。
But last year’s competition became a viral hit on ESPN and YouTube, and this year, the organizers are trying to capitalize.
但去年的比赛在 ESPN 和 YouTube 上引起了热议，今年，组织者正试图利用这一机会。
After all, someone points out to me, poker is basically just math, and it’s all over TV.
毕竟，有人向我指出，扑克基本上只是数学，而且电视上到处都是。
Why not spreadsheets?
为什么不用电子表格？
Excel is a tool.
Excel是一个工具。
It’s a game.
这是一个游戏。
Now it hopes to become a sport.
现在它希望成为一项运动。
I’ve come to realize in my two days in this ballroom that understanding a spreadsheet is like a superpower.
在这个宴会厅的两天里，我逐渐意识到理解电子表格就像一种超能力。
The folks in this room make their living on their ability to take some complex thing — a company’s sales, a person’s lifestyle, a region’s political leanings, a race car — and pull it apart into its many component pieces.
这个房间里的人靠他们的能力谋生，他们能够将一些复杂的东西——公司的销售额、个人的生活方式、地区的政治倾向、赛车——并将其分解成许多组成部分。
If you can reduce the world down to a bunch of rows and columns, you can control it.
如果你可以将世界简化为一堆行和列，你就可以控制它。
Manipulate it.
操纵它。
Build it and rebuild it in a thousand new ways, with a couple of hotkeys and an undo button at the ready.
以一千种新的方式构建和重建它，并准备好几个热键和一个撤消按钮。
A good spreadsheet shows you the universe and gives you the ability to create new ones.
一个好的电子表格可以向您展示整个宇宙，并让您能够创建新的宇宙。
And the people in this room, in their dad jeans and short-sleeved button-downs, are the gods on Olympus, bending everything to their will.
这个房间里的人们，穿着老爹牛仔裤和短袖纽扣衬衫，是奥林匹斯山上的众神，他们让一切都屈服于他们的意志。
here There There is one inescapably weird thing about competitive Excel: spreadsheets are not fun.
竞争激烈的 Excel 有一个不可避免的怪异之处：电子表格并不有趣。
Spreadsheets are very powerful, very interesting, very important, but they are for work.
电子表格非常强大、非常有趣、非常重要，但它们是用于工作的。
Most of what happens at the FMWC is, in almost every practical way, indistinguishable from the normal work that millions of people do in spreadsheets every day.
FMWC 发生的大部分事情，几乎在所有实际方面，都与数百万人每天在电子表格中进行的正常工作没有什么区别。
You can gussy up the format, shorten the timelines, and raise the stakes all you want — the reality is you’re still asking a bunch of people who make spreadsheets for a living to just make more spreadsheets, even if they’re doing it in Vegas.
你可以美化格式、缩短时间、提高赌注——现实是你仍然要求一群以制作电子表格为生的人制作更多电子表格，即使他们是在维加斯做的。
You really can’t overstate how important and ubiquitous spreadsheets really are, though.
不过，你真的不能夸大电子表格的重要性和普遍性。
“Electronic spreadsheets” actually date back earlier than computers and are maybe the single most important reason computers first became mainstream.
“电子表格”的历史实际上早于计算机，并且可能是计算机首次成为主流的最重要原因。
In the late 1970s, a Harvard MBA student named Dan Bricklin started to dream up a software program that could automatically do the math he was constantly doing and re-doing in class.
20 世纪 70 年代末，哈佛大学 MBA 学生丹·布里克林 (Dan Bricklin) 开始梦想一种软件程序，可以自动完成他在课堂上不断做和重复做的数学运算。
“I imagined a magic blackboard that if you erased one number and wrote a new thing in, all of the other numbers would automatically change, like word processing with numbers,” he said in a 2016 TED Talk .
“我想象了一块神奇的黑板，如果你擦掉一个数字并在上面写下一个新的东西，所有其他数字都会自动改变，就像用数字进行文字处理一样，”他在 2016 年 TED 演讲中说道。
This sounds quaint and obvious now, but it was revolutionary then.
现在这听起来很奇怪而且显而易见，但在当时却是革命性的。
Bricklin’s software, eventually called VisiCalc, gave many people their first good reason ever to buy a computer.
Bricklin 的软件最终被称为 VisiCalc，为许多人提供了购买计算机的第一个充分理由。
In 1996, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called VisiCalc the first of two “explosions that propelled the industry forward” and said spreadsheets were the driving force behind the success of the Apple II.
1996 年，苹果公司首席执行官史蒂夫·乔布斯 (Steve Jobs) 称 VisiCalc 是“推动行业向前发展的两次爆炸”中的第一次，并表示电子表格是 Apple II 成功的推动力。
A generation later, a competitor called Lotus 1-2-3 became a key app for the IBM PC.
一代人之后，名为 Lotus 1-2-3 的竞争对手成为 IBM PC 的关键应用程序。
By 1985, after briefly dabbling with a program called Multiplan, Microsoft announced a powerful spreadsheet app of its own, called Excel.
到 1985 年，在短暂涉足名为 Multiplan 的程序后，微软宣布推出自己的功能强大的电子表格应用程序，名为 Excel。
At the time, it was an app for Apple’s Macintosh, which was flagging in sales; both Apple and Microsoft thought the best way to compete was with spreadsheets.
当时，它是一款针对苹果 Macintosh 的应用程序，销量低迷。苹果和微软都认为最好的竞争方式是电子表格。
They were right.
他们是对的。
Four decades later, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called Excel “the best consumer product we ever created.” He doesn’t just see it as an enterprise tool.
四十年后，微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉 (Satya Nadella) 称 Excel 是“我们创造的最好的消费产品”。他不仅仅将其视为一种企业工具。
It’s for everything.
这是为了一切。
Nadella said he simply can’t imagine a world without Excel.
纳德拉表示，他根本无法想象没有 Excel 的世界。
“People couldn’t make sense of numbers before, and now everyone can.”
“以前人们无法理解数字，但现在每个人都可以了。”
The goal isn’t just getting an answer.
目标不仅仅是获得答案。
It’s understanding all the inputs that allowed us to arrive there.
正是理解所有的输入才让我们能够到达那里。
Looking back, there’s a surprising resemblance between the way we talked about spreadsheets in the ’80s and the way we talk about artificial intelligence now.
回顾过去，我们在 80 年代谈论电子表格的方式与现在谈论人工智能的方式惊人地相似。
The same worries about automating people out of jobs; the same questions about whether we could really trust the computers to do all this complicated work so quickly.
同样的担忧是人们会因为自动化而失业。同样的问题是我们是否真的可以相信计算机能够如此快速地完成所有这些复杂的工作。
In fact, in the 1980s, spreadsheet programs were the AI bots of their day.
事实上，在 20 世纪 80 年代，电子表格程序就是当时的人工智能机器人。
“The aim is to knock some sense into otherwise mindless computers,” The New York Times ’ David Sanger wrote in 1985 , “getting them to understand — and perform automatically — the tasks that individual users struggle each day not to forget.”
《纽约时报》的戴维·桑格 (David Sanger) 在 1985 年写道：“我们的目标是让原本无意识的计算机具备一些感知能力，让它们理解并自动执行个人用户每天努力避免忘记的任务。”
In so many ways, though, the spreadsheet trajectory is the best-case scenario for an AI future.
不过，从很多方面来看，电子表格轨迹是人工智能未来的最佳场景。
Where current AI tools like ChatGPT try to abstract away the inner workings and underlying data and simply offer you the world through a text box, spreadsheets do the opposite: they promise an ever greater level of control and understanding of the world around you.
当前的人工智能工具（如 ChatGPT）试图抽象出内部运作和底层数据，并通过文本框简单地为您提供世界，而电子表格则相反：它们承诺对您周围的世界进行更高水平的控制和理解。
The people who work on Excel and other spreadsheet tools are perpetually trying to make them easier to use while also giving power users more ways to tinker.
使用 Excel 和其他电子表格工具的人们一直在努力使它们更易于使用，同时也为高级用户提供更多的修改方式。
If you want to create something with AI, you just type in a prompt and hope for the best.
如果你想用人工智能创造一些东西，你只需输入提示并期待最好的结果。
A spreadsheet artist, on the other hand — and there really is such a thing — can paint their creation one cell at a time.
另一方面，电子表格艺术家——确实有这样的事情——可以一次在一个单元格上绘制他们的作品。
The goal isn’t just getting an answer.
目标不仅仅是获得答案。
It’s understanding all the inputs that allowed us to arrive there.
正是理解所有的输入才让我们能够到达那里。
The converse of that, though, is that spreadsheets make plain exactly how easy it is to reduce so much of modern life to a bunch of numbers and formulas in a spreadsheet.
然而，与此相反的是，电子表格清楚地表明，将现代生活的大部分内容简化为电子表格中的一堆数字和公式是多么容易。
Give me some numbers, and my Excel file will predict when you’re going to die.
给我一些数字，我的 Excel 文件就会预测你什么时候会死。
Dating spreadsheets have become normal in a world where romance is about swipes and statistics.
在浪漫在于滑动和统计的世界里，约会电子表格已成为常态。
Have a hard decision to make?
有一个艰难的决定吗？
I have a decision-matrix spreadsheet for you!
我有一个决策矩阵电子表格给你！
In a spreadsheet world, everything is comparable, reducible to some base figure that eventually explains everything if only you know how to ask.
在电子表格世界中，一切都是可比较的，都可以简化为某个基本数字，只要您知道如何提问，最终就能解释一切。
Spreadsheets promise the world isn’t actually complicated — you just have to know the formulas.
电子表格承诺世界实际上并不复杂——您只需要知道公式即可。
I don’t know if that’s beautiful or bleak or both, but it’s certainly big business.
我不知道这是美好的还是黯淡的，或者两者兼而有之，但这肯定是一笔大生意。
his This This group that has gathered in Vegas operates like a mix of camp friends, colleagues, and competitors.
聚集在维加斯的这个团队就像是营地朋友、同事和竞争对手的混合体。
Most work in financial analysis in some way: on the first day, I had lunch with a financial modeler for a mining company, an actuary, and a certified Microsoft MVP — a Most Valuable Professional, who teaches other people how to use Excel.
大多数人都以某种方式从事财务分析：第一天，我与一家矿业公司的财务建模师、精算师和经过认证的 Microsoft MVP（最有价值的专业人士）共进午餐，他教其他人如何使用 Excel。
We sat in the MGM Grand food court eating salads and Chinese buffet talking about the MVP’s expansive kaleidoscope collection and the modeler’s current budgeting challenges given the strange economy and some regulatory complications.
我们坐在米高梅大酒店的美食广场，吃着沙拉和中式自助餐，谈论着 MVP 丰富的万花筒收藏，以及模型师当前在奇怪的经济和一些监管复杂性的情况下面临的预算挑战。
Many of these folks have been playing competitive Excel together for years.
其中许多人多年来一直一起玩 Excel 竞技游戏。
Years ago, the main organization for these players was called ModelOff, which was much more strictly a financial-modeling competition.
几年前，这些玩家的主要组织称为 ModelOff，它是更严格的金融建模竞赛。
Every year, a bunch of these Excel users would get together, usually in New York or London, and essentially do their job competitively.
每年，一群 Excel 用户都会聚集在一起，通常在纽约或伦敦，本质上是竞争性地完成自己的工作。
The last ModelOff was in 2019, before the pandemic put a stop to pretty much anything in person.
上一次 ModelOff 是在 2019 年，当时疫情导致几乎所有面对面的活动都停止了。
But Grigolyunovich, a longtime ModelOff fan and competitor, decided to keep the legacy going.
但格里戈留诺维奇（Grigolyunovich）是 ModelOff 的长期粉丝和竞争对手，他决定继续传承这一传统。
Grigolyunovich is tall, with blonde hair parted down the middle and his shirt permanently tucked in, and exudes a kind of constant low-grade, manic energy.
格里戈柳诺维奇身材高大，金发中分，衬衫永远塞在里面，散发着一种持续的低级、狂躁的能量。
He loves Excel — loves using it, loves talking about it, loves tinkering with the sheets he’s made for this weekend.
他喜欢 Excel——喜欢使用它，喜欢谈论它，喜欢修改他为这个周末制作的表格。
He created the Financial Modeling World Cup in 2020 in hopes that he could keep the ModelOff spirit alive but also expand it.
他于 2020 年创办了金融建模世界杯，希望能够保持 ModelOff 精神并扩大其规模。
“I really missed playing” when ModelOff stopped, he says, “because I’d been doing that for seven years.
当 ModelOff 停止时，“我真的很怀念玩游戏”，他说，“因为我已经这样做了七年了。
I also wanted to make a better tournament.” The only downside, he says, is that running the competition means he can’t participate anymore.
我也想举办一场更好的比赛。”他说，唯一的缺点是举办比赛意味着他不能再参加了。
The Financial Modeling World Cup is really three separate things: There’s the Excel World Championship, the most mainstream (and I use “mainstream” in the loosest way possible) version of competitive Excel, which Grigolyunovich hopes can turn into a popular esport.
金融建模世界杯实际上是三个独立的事情：一个是 Excel 世界锦标赛，这是最主流（我以尽可能宽松的方式使用“主流”）版本的 Excel 竞技赛，Grigolyunovich 希望它能够变成一项流行的电子竞技。
There’s a similar event for college students, known as the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge.
还有一个针对大学生的类似活动，称为 Microsoft Excel 大学挑战赛。
And there’s the Financial Modeling World Cup, which is more like ModelOff — it requires financial knowledge, uses financial cases, and has slightly different rules.
还有金融建模世界杯，它更像是 ModelOff——它需要金融知识，使用金融案例，并且规则略有不同。
The FMWC is the most complex, maybe the most prestigious, and definitely the least exciting of the three.
FMWC 是三者中最复杂的，也许也是最负盛名的，但绝对是最不令人兴奋的。
The Excel World Championship had a viral moment in 2022, when it showed up in a half-hour block on ESPN’s annual “The Ocho” event — a joke from the movie Dodgeball before ESPN took the idea and made it real — in which the network airs a day full of sports that would otherwise never make its schedule.
Excel 世界锦标赛在 2022 年出现了病毒式传播，当时它出现在 ESPN 年度“The Ocho”赛事中的半小时节目中——这是电影《躲避球》中的一个笑话，之后 ESPN 采纳了这个想法并将其变为现实——该赛事将播出一整天的体育赛事，否则这些体育赛事将不会出现在节目表中。
The “Excel Esports: All-Star Battle” portion aired at 5AM Eastern, between the 2022 eSkootr Championship and the 2021 World Air Hockey Championship, but enough viewers were excited and surprised to see competitive Excel on TV that it had a bit of an online moment.
“Excel 电子竞技：全明星之战”部分于东部时间上午 5 点在 2022 年 eSkootr 锦标赛和 2021 年世界空气曲棍球锦标赛之间播出，但足够多的观众对在电视上看到竞技性的 Excel 感到兴奋和惊讶，因为它有一点在线时刻。
Now, Grigolyunovich says the job is to turn that virality into true momentum.
格里戈柳诺维奇表示，现在的工作是将病毒式传播转化为真正的动力。
He wants the FMWC to be a fun community activity, an educational resource for people of all ages, and an honest-to-God spectator sport.
他希望 FMWC 成为一项有趣的社区活动、适合所有年龄段的人的教育资源以及一项诚实的观赏性运动。
It’s not clear to me whether it’s possible to do all three of those things — and a lot of the people here think it’s not.
我不清楚这三件事是否可以全部完成，而且这里的很多人都认为不可能。
David Brown, a University of Arizona professor and previous FMWC finalist who also runs the collegiate tournaments, says he thinks competitive Excel makes the most sense as a fun way to teach students some more practical skills, in a sort of Model UN way.
亚利桑那大学教授、前 FMWC 决赛入围者、大学锦标赛的负责人戴维·布朗 (David Brown) 表示，他认为 Excel 竞赛是一种有趣的方式，可以以一种模拟联合国的方式教授学生一些更实用的技能，这是最有意义的。
Hardly anyone here seems to think Excel esports is a path to true fame and fortune.
这里几乎没有人认为 Excel 电子竞技是一条通往真正名誉和财富的道路。
Image caption: Excel Esports might not make you rich or famous yet, but the trophy looks great in your Zoom background.
图片说明：Excel Esports 可能还不会让您变得富有或出名，但奖杯在您的 Zoom 背景中看起来很棒。
The best way to train for the Excel World Championship, everybody tells me, is to practice with old cases.
每个人都告诉我，备战 Excel 世界锦标赛的最佳方法是使用旧案例进行练习。
The great players treat this the way a football player might watch film or run the same play over and over until the timing is perfect; you do a case, then do it again another way, until you’ve sharpened your skills and your muscle memory such that the next time something like it comes up, you’re ready.
伟大的球员对待这一点就像足球运动员看电影或一遍又一遍地播放相同的比赛，直到时机成熟为止；你做了一个案例，然后以另一种方式再做一次，直到你提高了你的技能和你的肌肉记忆，这样下次出现类似的事情时，你就准备好了。
Every case is different, but they do have a lot in common.
每个案例都有所不同，但它们确实有很多共同点。
Lotteries and slot machines are common case fodder, and there are plenty involving poker.
彩票和老虎机是常见的案例素材，其中很多都涉及扑克。
The final case in last year’s championship was about chess, another game with near-infinite variations and permutations.
去年锦标赛的最后一个案例是关于国际象棋的，这是另一种具有近乎无限变化和排列的游戏。
The more you train your brain to work with these mountains of data, the better you get.
你越多地训练你的大脑处理这些海量的数据，你就会做得越好。
Diarmuid Early, a past ModelOff champion and the biggest celebrity in the room — an article once referred to him as “the LeBron James of Excel,” which immediately stuck — is sitting in the back row of the Vegas ballroom, trying not to think about whether he’s trained enough.
迪尔穆德·厄尔利 (Diarmuid Early) 是一位前届 ModelOff 冠军，也是房间里最出名的名人——一篇文章曾称他为“Excel 界的勒布朗·詹姆斯”，这篇文章立刻被人们所接受。他坐在维加斯舞厅的后排，努力不去想自己是否训练得足够好。
I’d been hearing about Early for months before we met, and he’s one of two names everyone offers when I ask who they think might win.
在我们见面之前的几个月里，我就已经听说过厄尔利了，当我问他们认为谁可能获胜时，他是每个人都会给出的两个名字之一。
People speak of him both fondly and with just a little bit of reverence.
人们谈论他时既充满爱意，又带着一点崇敬。
In reality, Early — everybody calls him “Dim” — is a friendly, relaxed but fast-talking financial consultant with thinning hair and a slight Irish accent who showed up to Vegas in the middle of the busiest time of his year at work.
事实上，厄尔利——每个人都叫他“迪姆”——是一位友好、轻松但语速很快的财务顾问，头发稀疏，带有轻微的爱尔兰口音，他在一年中工作最繁忙的时候出现在维加斯。
I catch him in jeans and a gray hoodie, typing furiously on his laptop.
我看到他穿着牛仔裤和灰色连帽衫，在笔记本电脑上疯狂地打字。
In Excel, obviously.
显然，在 Excel 中。
“I do bonus planning work with an investment bank,” he tells me, “so the end of the year is Go Time.” He’s already qualified for the finals on Saturday but is a little nervous about how he’ll do this weekend.
“我在一家投资银行从事奖金规划工作，”他告诉我，“所以年底就是开始的时候了。”他已经获得了周六决赛的资格，但对本周末的表现有些紧张。
“I was hoping to be doing more training than I am,” he says, but work has made that impossible.
“我本来希望能接受比现在更多的训练，”他说，但工作使这一切变得不可能。
Even during the down moments (and the occasional not-so-interesting moments) of the conference, I keep catching Early swapping his fun spreadsheets for work spreadsheets.
即使在会议的低潮时刻（以及偶尔不那么有趣的时刻），我也不断发现厄尔利把他有趣的电子表格换成了工作电子表格。
All the important stuff in an Excel competition, Early says, happens in the first few minutes.
Early 表示，Excel 竞赛中的所有重要内容都发生在最初的几分钟内。
After reading the instructions, “you’ve got, like, 30 seconds to think, ‘Okay, how am I going to approach this?’ and then it’s just, go .
读完说明后，“你有 30 秒的时间思考，‘好吧，我该如何处理这个问题？’然后就开始吧。”
If you set off down the wrong path, even if you realize five minutes in that there was a better way to build it, it’s probably not worth going back and changing it.” Some players will just dive into the first question in the first level and take things from there; the ones who win are usually the people who build a system that will eventually answer all the questions.
如果你走上了错误的道路，即使你在五分钟内意识到有更好的方法来构建它，也可能不值得回去改变它。”有些玩家会直接进入第一关的第一个问题并从中获取东西；获胜者通常是那些构建了最终能够回答所有问题的系统的人。
“But if you get that judgment call wrong,” Early says, “and you’re three minutes away from having all the points but what you actually have is none of the points, then you’re dead, right?” He has horror stories of this happening.
“但如果你的判断错误，”厄尔说，“你距离获得所有分数还有三分钟的时间，但你实际上没有获得任何分数，那么你就死定了，对吧？”他有关于这种情况发生的恐怖故事。
Everyone does.
每个人都这样做。
“If you ask the same question to five different people, and they have Excel experience, they might think of five completely different ways to do it,” says Peter Scharl, another already qualified finalist.
“如果你向五个不同的人提出同样的问题，而他们都有 Excel 经验，他们可能会想出五种完全不同的方法来实现这一点，”另一位已获得决赛资格的 Peter Scharl 说道。
“There are things I do in the Excel competitions that I didn’t know how to do three months ago, six months ago just because of doing it and reviewing what I did or reviewing what other people are doing, reading comments, watching videos.”
“我在 Excel 比赛中做了一些我三个月前、六个月前不知道该怎么做的事情，只是因为这样做并回顾我所做的事情或回顾其他人正在做的事情，阅读评论，观看视频。”
In the last couple of years, though, there’s been a shift in the Excel world: you can now write complex, reusable functions called Lambdas in the app and even write Python code directly into a cell.
不过，在过去几年中，Excel 世界发生了变化：您现在可以在应用程序中编写称为 Lambda 的复杂、可重用函数，甚至可以将 Python 代码直接写入单元格中。
(Microsoft’s Nadella recently called Excel formulas “the world’s most popular programming language,” and he’s probably not wrong.) More than one person in Vegas tells me about the work of Eric Oehm, known to many in the community as the Excel Robot, who builds software that automates a lot of the drudgery of building spreadsheets.
（微软的纳德拉最近将 Excel 公式称为“世界上最流行的编程语言”，他可能没有错。）维加斯不止一个人向我讲述了 Eric Oehm 的工作，他在社区中被许多人称为“Excel 机器人”，他开发的软件可以自动完成构建电子表格的许多苦差事。
Brown jokes that Oehm might give him some particularly cool tools that he hides from Early “because he wants someone to beat Dim.”
布朗开玩笑说，奥姆可能会给他一些特别酷的工具，但他对厄尔利隐瞒了这些工具，“因为他希望有人打败迪姆”。
Most days of the year, tools like these are a godsend to everyone in this room in Vegas.
在一年中的大部分时间里，这样的工具对于拉斯维加斯这个房间里的每个人来说都是天赐之物。
A faster way to build powerful systems in a spreadsheet?
在电子表格中构建强大系统的更快方法？
Sold.
卖。
But in competition, it’s like a performance-enhancing drug.
但在比赛中，它就像一种提高成绩的药物。
Brown says he suspects eventually, there will be two versions of the Excel World Championship: one in which you can bring all the outside tools and knowledge you want, and one that is just you and a fresh install of Excel.
Brown 表示，他怀疑 Excel 世界锦标赛最终将有两种版本：一种是您可以携带所需的所有外部工具和知识，另一种则只有您和全新安装的 Excel。
The former version, he thinks, could be wild in what it makes possible, much like Peter Thiel and others think the so-called “Enhanced Games” could make athletic competition all the more impressive.
他认为，前一个版本可能会变得疯狂，就像彼得泰尔和其他人认为所谓的“增强游戏”可以让体育比赛更加令人印象深刻一样。
By now, I’ve asked a few folks if they’re worried about eventually being replaced by AI, and they all basically laugh — have you seen what happens when ChatGPT does even simple math, and do you know how high the stakes are for getting a company’s decade-long projections right?
到目前为止，我已经问过一些人是否担心最终会被人工智能取代，他们基本上都笑了——你有没有看到当 ChatGPT 做简单的数学计算时会发生什么，你知道让一家公司的十年预测正确的风险有多大吗？
But Excel Robot and Python do seem to spark some existential concern.
但 Excel Robot 和 Python 似乎确实引发了一些存在主义的担忧。
They might make Excel easier, but they also make it more opaque.
它们可能使 Excel 变得更容易，但也使其变得更加不透明。
And is being good at Excel about getting answers out of the spreadsheet or about understanding where the answers come from?
擅长 Excel 是指从电子表格中获取答案还是了解答案的来源？
he The The energy in the MGM Grand ballroom is noticeably different on Saturday morning.
周六早上，米高梅大酒店宴会厅的活力明显不同。
It’s finals day.
今天是决赛日。
We’re due for a few more panels and tutorials, and the champion will be crowned this evening.
我们还会有更多的小组讨论和教程，冠军将于今晚加冕。
Before the day’s events kick off, I run into the biggest name in Excel who isn’t competing tonight: Laurence Lau.
在当天的活动开始之前，我遇到了今晚没有参加比赛的 Excel 界大腕：劳伦斯·刘 (Laurence Lau)。
He is the opposite of everyone else I’ve met this week.
他与我本周遇到的其他人相反。
Lau is wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses in a room full of khakis and dress shirts, he’s loud and brash and rude to some of the other competitors, and he thinks the whole FMWC is a little ridiculous.
刘穿着皮夹克，戴着墨镜，在一个满是卡其裤和正装衬衫的房间里，他对其他一些参赛者大声、傲慢和粗鲁，他认为整个 FMWC 有点可笑。
He’s also the #1 ranked player in the financial modeling side of the competition, and virtually everyone agrees he’s the best Exceler in the world when he bothers to show up.
他还是比赛中金融建模方面排名第一的选手，几乎每个人都认为，当他费心出现时，他是世界上最好的 Exceler。
If the FMWC wants to be a success, Lau tells me, it needs to be bigger.
刘告诉我，如果 FMWC 想要成功，它就需要变得更大。
If it wants to be bigger, it needs the best players and the biggest personalities to show up.
如果它想变得更大，它需要最好的球员和最伟大的人物的出现。
Lau believes he’s here to remind everyone of how exciting all this could be, if only the organizers pull a Jerry Maguire and show him the money.
刘相信他来这里是为了提醒大家，如果组织者拉出杰里·马奎尔并向他展示资金，这一切将会多么令人兴奋。
(He points out that this whole thing could be bankrolled by Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, with money found in the couch cushions in Redmond.) Even his jacket — a New York Yankees All-Star Game jacket from 2008, which he says was his favorite team “because I’m a fan of whatever team has the highest payroll” — is his way of reminding everyone that sports are about stars, and stars should be paid like it.
（他指出，这整件事可以由世界上最有价值的公司微软提供资金，在雷德蒙德的沙发垫上找到钱。）甚至他的夹克——一件 2008 年纽约洋基队全明星赛的夹克，他说这是他最喜欢的球队，“因为我是工资最高的球队的粉丝”——也是他提醒每个人运动是关于明星的方式，明星也应该得到同样的报酬。
Lau wants the FMWC to have multimillion-dollar prizes, not the measly three grand the winner will get tonight.
刘希望 FMWC 能够获得数百万美元的奖金，而不是获胜者今晚获得的区区三项大奖。
If this is a sport, it should be a full-time job.
如果这是一项运动，那么它应该是一份全职工作。
Right now, he says, “people do this because they like Excel.” These events will always feel more like a golf weekend with the guys than a PGA championship.
他说，现在“人们这样做是因为他们喜欢 Excel。”这些赛事总是感觉更像是与球员们一起度过的高尔夫周末，而不是 PGA 锦标赛。
And, he reminds me, not everyone likes Excel.
而且，他提醒我，并不是每个人都喜欢 Excel。
“Most Americans hate their job, right?” They don’t come home from work wanting to look at more spreadsheets.
“大多数美国人讨厌他们的工作，对吗？”他们下班回家并不想查看更多电子表格。
It’s fine for the FMWC to be about education and camaraderie, but then why is it streaming on ESPN?
FMWC 的主题是教育和友情，这很好，但为什么它会在 ESPN 上直播呢？
He senses an identity crisis in this room, and it makes him mad that no one will do anything about it.
他感觉到这个房间里存在身份危机，而没有人对此采取任何行动，这让他很生气。
Lau compares himself to Deion Sanders, the famous football player who took on the “Prime Time” persona to bring more attention to players at cornerback, which, before him, had been one of the lowest-paying positions in the NFL.
刘将自己比作迪昂·桑德斯（Deion Sanders），后者是一位著名的橄榄球运动员，他以“黄金时段”的形象吸引更多人关注角卫球员，而在他之前，角卫一直是 NFL 薪酬最低的职位之一。
He’s happy to be the brash jerk in the room, trying to convince people to make the competition worth his while — and maybe build a brand in the process.
他很高兴成为房间里傲慢的混蛋，试图说服人们让比赛值得他参与——也许还能在这个过程中建立一个品牌。
The world may not run on spreadsheets, but spreadsheets run the world
世界可能不是靠电子表格运行，但电子表格却在运行世界
His obnoxiousness stands out even more in this crowd, which seems to skew introverted and mild-mannered.
在这群似乎偏向内向和温和的人群中，他的讨厌更加突出。
Nobody’s exactly competing for stage time with Lau’s antics.
没有人会与刘的滑稽动作竞争舞台时间。
But as uncomfortable as everyone appears to be with his shtick, they also seem to understand his point.
尽管每个人似乎都对他的伎俩感到不舒服，但他们似乎也理解他的观点。
After all, these people do puzzles for fun and overwhelmingly do financial modeling for work.
毕竟，这些人做谜题是为了好玩，而绝大多数人做金融建模是为了工作。
For all the fun art projects and life-tracking stuff that everyday people do in Excel, the true customers for these tools are the money guys.
对于人们每天在 Excel 中进行的所有有趣的艺术项目和生活追踪工作来说，这些工具的真正客户是有钱人。
The ones who used the advent of the spreadsheet to turn Wall Street into a global industry, that built wildly complicated things like collateralized debt obligations and helped usher in a financial crisis in 2008.
那些人利用电子表格的出现将华尔街变成了一个全球性行业，建立了债务抵押债券等极其复杂的东西，并导致了 2008 年的金融危机。
The world may not run on spreadsheets, but spreadsheets run the world.
世界可能不是靠电子表格运行，但电子表格却在运行世界。
Maybe all Lau is doing is saying the quiet part out loud, which is surprisingly uneasy in a room full of finance professionals.
也许刘所做的只是大声说出安静的部分，这在一个满是金融专业人士的房间里令人惊讶地不安。
Lau heads inside to join a panel of former Excel champions, and I head over to Grigolyunovich to get his take.
Lau 走进去，加入了由前 Excel 冠军组成的小组，我则前往 Grigolyunovich 那里听听他的看法。
He’s a little embarrassed by Lau’s whole alter ego bit, it seems, though he does agree in principle with some of his stances.
看起来他对刘的整个另一个自我有点感到尴尬，尽管他原则上同意他的一些立场。
Grigolyunovich says there’s plenty of room for more money — including from Microsoft, which is already a sponsor and would surely be happy to see Excel become must-watch TV.
Grigolyunovich 表示，还有足够的空间获得更多资金，包括来自微软的资金，该公司已经是赞助商，并且肯定会很高兴看到 Excel 成为必看电视。
But he’s torn between loving this community and wanting it to be educational and fun for the people who do it while also wanting it to be bigger.
但他在热爱这个社区和希望它对社区参与者具有教育意义和乐趣同时又希望它变得更大之间左右为难。
And he wonders if there could be another reason Lau’s not competing — maybe he doesn’t like the cameras and the pressure?
他想知道刘不参加比赛是否还有另一个原因——也许他不喜欢镜头和压力？
Meanwhile, Lau has taken the stage in that Yankees jacket and sunglasses and is explaining to everyone why they shouldn’t even try to compete: because, odds are, they’re not smart enough.
与此同时，刘穿着洋基队的夹克和太阳镜走上舞台，向所有人解释为什么他们甚至不应该尝试参加比赛：因为很可能，他们不够聪明。
When the moderator asks him if this is all just a bit, he laughs.
当主持人问他这是否只是一点点时，他笑了。
“I can be normal if I need to be,” he says.
“如果需要的话，我可以变得正常，”他说。
But he gets back to his point.
但他回到了自己的观点。
“My argument is a top Excel analyst is three, four, or five times more productive than your average,” he says, working himself up again.
“我的观点是，顶级 Excel 分析师的工作效率是平均水平的三倍、四倍或五倍，”他一边说，一边又重新振作起来。
“They’re not getting paid three, four, or five times more than your average person.” He gestures to the audience: “If you work for a company and you’re pretty good at Excel, you are underpaid…
“他们的工资不会比普通人多三、四或五倍。”他向观众示意：“如果你在一家公司工作，并且 Excel 非常出色，那么你的工资就很低......
so just remember that.” Brown, the moderator, quickly changes the subject.
所以只要记住这一点就可以了。”主持人布朗很快改变了话题。
After the panels end, Grigolyunovich announces the winners of yesterday’s last-chance qualification round.
小组赛结束后，格里戈柳诺维奇宣布了昨天最后一轮资格赛的获胜者。
One by one, he reveals the eight names of the top finishers, rounding out the field of 16 for tonight’s finals.
他一一揭晓了 8 名顶尖选手的名字，最终进入今晚决赛的 16 名选手名单。
(Jakub Pomykalski, an already qualified finalist who did the qualification round for fun, won it by scoring 1,234 of the 1,500 available points — I don’t think he intended to intimidate everyone by doing that, but he did.) I didn’t qualify, which is not remotely shocking but is slightly disappointing nonetheless.
（雅库布·波米卡尔斯基 (Jakub Pomykalski) 是一位已经晋级决赛的选手，他参加资格赛只是为了好玩，他在 1,500 分中获得了 1,234 分，赢得了比赛——我不认为他是想以此来恐吓所有人，但他确实这么做了。）我没有晋级，这并不令人震惊，但还是有点令人失望。
And with that, the conference portion of the weekend concludes.
周末的会议部分就这样结束了。
As we all file out of the MGM Grand ballroom, everyone receives a Certificate of Completion from the Financial Modeling World Cup.
当我们列队走出米高梅大宴会厅时，每个人都会收到金融建模世界杯的结业证书。
They all look like college diplomas, and mine congratulates me on “successful completion of financial modeling & Microsoft Excel training.”
它们看起来都像大学文凭，而我的则祝贺我“成功完成财务建模和 Microsoft Excel 培训”。
A A few hours and a brisk walk down the Vegas strip later, I arrive at the night’s chosen venue: the HyperX Arena, a 30,000-square-foot esports space with seating for 70, dozens of gaming PCs, a bar, and a large stage in the center.
几个小时后，我沿着维加斯大道轻快地走了几个小时，到达了当晚选定的场地：HyperX Arena，这是一个 30,000 平方英尺的电子竞技空间，可容纳 70 人，配有数十台游戏电脑、一间酒吧，中心还有一个大舞台。
On a typical day, the arena might be home to a Fortnite tournament, but tonight, it will be spreadsheets.
在典型的一天中，竞技场可能是《堡垒之夜》锦标赛的举办地，但今晚，它将是电子表格。
The finals don’t start until 7:30PM, but by about 3PM, the arena is already buzzing.
决赛要到晚上7点30分才开始，但到了下午3点左右，赛场就已经热闹起来。
Max Sych, the FMWC’s chief operating officer, is onstage polishing the three trophies for the top finishers when he sees me and offers to give me a tour of the arena.
FMWC 的首席运营官马克斯·赛奇 (Max Sych) 正在台上为顶尖选手擦亮三座奖杯，这时他看到了我，并提出带我参观竞技场。
He leads me through the room where all the arena’s producers turn its many cameras into a single livestream.
他带领我穿过房间，所有竞技场的制作人都将其许多摄像机变成一个直播。
We walk through the neon-green Hype Tunnel, where each competitor will enter dramatically and then pause for a selfie before they take the stage.
我们穿过霓虹灯绿色的炒作隧道，每个参赛者都会戏剧性地进入这里，然后在上台之前停下来自拍。
We peek into the VIP room, where sponsors will watch the event.
我们向贵宾室望去，赞助商将在那里观看比赛。
Finally, we land in the commentary booth, where Oz du Soleil and Jon Acampora are already talking through their plans for the evening.
最后，我们降落在解说室，奥兹·杜·索雷 (Oz du Soleil) 和乔恩·阿坎波拉 (Jon Acampora) 已经在讨论他们当晚的计划。
These are two of the best-known figures in the Excel world and the two men responsible for helping viewers make sense of fast-paced spreadsheeting.
他们是 Excel 界最著名的两位人物，也是帮助观众理解快节奏电子表格的两位人物。
Acampora makes his prediction: he thinks Early is likely to be in the top two, along with Andrew Ngai, an Australian actuary who won the competition both of the previous two years.
阿坎波拉做出了自己的预测：他认为厄尔利很可能与前两年赢得比赛的澳大利亚精算师安德鲁·奈（Andrew Ngai）一起跻身前两名。
Image caption: Jon Acampora and Oz du Soleil have the daunting task of explaining power-user Excel to casual fans.
图片说明：Jon Acampora 和 Oz du Soleil 面临着向普通粉丝解释高级用户 Excel 的艰巨任务。
At about 6:15PM, the arena’s doors open.
下午 6 点 15 分左右，竞技场的大门打开。
The contestants file in, clamber up onstage, and find their PCs.
参赛者鱼贯入场，爬上舞台，找到自己的电脑。
Many of them are wearing Excel Esports jerseys, which I’m just now learning are a thing; they look like soccer jerseys, with the name across the front and sponsor logos all over.
他们中的许多人都穿着 Excel Esports 球衣，我现在才知道这是一件事；它们看起来像足球球衣，正面有名字，到处都是赞助商标志。
A couple players wear green T-shirts that say “I simply” above the Excel logo.
几个玩家穿着绿色 T 恤，Excel 徽标上方写着“I just”。
(Get it?) A few wear their own clothes.
（明白了吗？） 有一些人穿着自己的衣服。
As a group, they look more like a bunch of friends heading to the bar to watch their favorite team’s game, rather than some of the world’s foremost athletes in an up-and-coming global sport.
作为一个群体，他们看起来更像是一群朋友前往酒吧观看他们最喜欢的球队的比赛，而不是参加一项新兴的全球运动的一些世界顶级运动员。
Group by group, the finalists sit down and begin to prepare their computers.
决赛选手们一组一组地坐下来，开始准备他们的电脑。
There are eight workstations on the stage for the two semifinal heats.
两场半决赛的舞台上有八个工作站。
The players aren’t allowed to use premade lambdas or formulas for tonight’s event; they’re all using identical PCs with identical copies of Excel.
今晚的活动不允许玩家使用预制的 lambda 或公式；他们都使用相同的电脑和相同的 Excel 副本。
They are, however, allowed to use their own keyboards, so a number of them start swapping their own for the glowing RGB mechanical sets on the desk.
然而，他们可以使用自己的键盘，因此他们中的一些人开始将自己的键盘换成桌子上发光的 RGB 机械键盘。
Sych tells them all they’ll be required to wear headphones so as not to hear the commentary or other noise in the arena and tells them they’re only allowed to use YouTube for music.
Sych 告诉他们，他们需要戴上耳机，以免听到赛场上的评论或其他噪音，并告诉他们只能使用 YouTube 播放音乐。
A few start loading playlists — I notice a surprising amount of Taylor Swift.
一些人开始加载播放列表——我注意到泰勒·斯威夫特的播放列表数量惊人。
At least one contestant slyly downloads Spotify.
至少一名参赛者偷偷下载了 Spotify。
Once they’re done prepping their stations, some of the players mingle onstage, talking strategy and swapping stories of cases past.
一旦他们准备好自己的位置，一些玩家就会在台上交流，谈论策略并交换过去案件的故事。
Ngai, with a hoodie on over his yellow jersey, sits in the front row of the bleachers eating an energy bar.
Ngai 身穿黄色球衣外罩连帽衫，坐在看台前排吃着能量棒。
And Patrick Chatain tells me his strategy for the evening.
帕特里克·查坦 (Patrick Chatain) 告诉我他当晚的策略。
Chatain, a senior studying deep learning at McGill University, is the youngest competitor here but says he’s really not feeling much pressure.
沙坦是麦吉尔大学深度学习专业的大四学生，他是这里最年轻的参赛者，但他表示自己并没有感受到太大的压力。
Last week, he won the individual competition at the Excel Collegiate Challenge after coming in second the year before, “and this was my last chance at that one.” Now he’s in the big leagues and has his whole career ahead of him.
上周，他在前一年获得第二名后，赢得了 Excel 大学挑战赛的个人比赛，“这是我最后一次机会。”现在他已经进入了大联盟，并且他的整个职业生涯都在等着他。
For tonight, Chatain’s plan is to lead with speed.
今晚，查坦的计划是加快速度。
He says he’s hoping to answer the bonus questions — which only a certain number of people can get each round — right away, just to lock in some points.
他说他希望立即回答奖励问题——每轮只有一定数量的人可以回答——只是为了锁定一些分数。
He’s been studying the others and has decided his best chance is not to try and build a perfect system but to just start sprinting from the beginning.
他一直在研究其他人，并决定最好的机会不是尝试建立一个完美的系统，而是从头开始冲刺。
It’s a bold strategy, but a necessary one, because the rules are different tonight.
这是一个大胆的策略，但也是必要的，因为今晚的规则有所不同。
Instead of giving every competitor 30 minutes to get as many points as possible, which is how virtually every previous competition has operated, tonight, the person with the lowest score will be eliminated every seven and a half minutes.
今晚，每七分半钟就会淘汰得分最低的人，而不是像以前的每场比赛一样，给每个参赛者30分钟的时间来获得尽可能多的分数。
The players have been telling me — and each other — all week how much this changes things.
球员们整个星期都在告诉我——以及彼此——这给事情带来了多大的改变。
There might not be time to build a perfect system, because you might already be out; even the game’s most thoughtful and deliberate players will have to play like there’s a fire chasing them down.
可能没有时间建立一个完美的系统，因为你可能已经出局了；即使是游戏中最深思熟虑、最深思熟虑的玩家也必须像有火在追赶他们一样玩。
A lot of players are thinking like Chatain, hoping to score a few quick points or get a bonus to buy some time.
很多玩家都像Chatain一样思考，希望能够快速获得一些分数或者获得奖金来争取一些时间。
At 7PM, the doors open again, and the fans stream into the 70 seats in the center of the room.
晚上 7 点，门再次打开，粉丝们涌入房间中央的 70 个座位。
They’re mostly friends, family, and fellow competitors — Lau walks in waving an enormous American flag, Scharl’s family starts yelling his name as soon as they see him.
他们大多是朋友、家人和其他参赛者——刘挥舞着一面巨大的美国国旗走进来，沙尔的家人一看到他就开始喊他的名字。
I see two signs for Pomykalski: one reads “Jakub the Polish Punisher’’ in cartoonish blue and green letters, and the other says in red, “Jakub never #REFs.” (That is a very good Excel joke.) One person holds a handmade sign featuring Clippy saying, “Go Dim!” and almost immediately, a “Clippy, Clippy” chant erupts from the crowd.
我看到波米卡尔斯基的两个标志：一个用卡通蓝色和绿色字母写着“波兰惩罚者雅库布”，另一个用红色写着“雅库布从不#REFs”。 （这是一个非常好的 Excel 笑话。）一个人举着一个手工制作的牌子，上面写着 Clippy，上面写着“Go Dim！”几乎立刻，人群中就爆发出了“Clippy，Clippy”的口号。
The night is off to a roaring start.
夜晚即将开始。
At 7:30PM on the dot, Stephen Rose, a former Microsoft marketing manager with a graying beard and a shock of black hair who is the evening’s emcee, quiets the crowd.
晚上 7 点 30 分，当晚的主持人、前微软营销经理斯蒂芬·罗斯 (Stephen Rose) 让人群安静了下来，他的胡须已花白，头发乌黑。
The lights go down, and the livestream begins.
灯光暗下，直播开始。
As Rose greets the competitors and viewers, I find Grigolyunovich standing off to the side of the bleachers.
当罗斯向参赛者和观众打招呼时，我发现格里戈柳诺维奇站在看台一侧。
He’s been running around nonstop for hours getting set up and finally paused to take it all in.
他连续几个小时不停地跑来跑去进行设置，最后停下来仔细观察这一切。
He seems sincerely shocked that this is happening.
他似乎对发生的事情感到由衷的震惊。
“Back in the ModelOff days, I was really thinking that ‘this deserves to be an esport, with the crowd cheering and the whole world watching.’” He gestures out at that vision coming to life.
“回到 ModelOff 的日子里，我真的在想‘这应该成为一项电子竞技，观众欢呼，全世界都在观看。’”他示意这个愿景即将成为现实。
The whole world might not be tuned in just yet, but this is a step toward that.
整个世界可能还没有适应，但这是朝着这个目标迈出的一步。
Onstage, Rose is bellowing into his microphone, introducing each player with all the gusto of a WWE announcer bringing Roman Reigns into the ring.
舞台上，罗斯对着麦克风大吼，介绍每位选手，就像 WWE 播音员将罗曼·雷恩斯带上擂台一样。
He has nicknames for everyone: Andrew “The Annihilator” Ngai, Peter “The Swiftie Sensation” Scharl, and Curtis “The Beer Hunter” Landry are a few of his best.
他给每个人起了绰号：安德鲁·“歼灭者”·奈、彼得·“迅捷感”·沙尔和柯蒂斯·“啤酒猎人”·兰德里都是他最好的绰号。
Each player has been instructed to come down the Hype Tunnel and pose before making their way onto the stage.
每位选手都被要求从炒作隧道走出来并在登上舞台之前摆好姿势。
The next few minutes provide an exceedingly broad definition of the term “pose.” Scharl mimics LeBron James’ chalk-throwing move, Chatain fist-pumps his way down the tunnel, Ngai stops and grinningly waves at the camera with both hands, and several competitors just walk casually past the green lights.
接下来的几分钟提供了“姿势”一词的极其广泛的定义。沙尔模仿勒布朗·詹姆斯扔粉笔的动作，查坦挥拳冲过隧道，奈停下来，笑着用双手向镜头挥手，几名参赛者只是漫不经心地走过绿灯。
Image caption: Andrew Ngai came into the weekend a two-time winner — and a favorite to three-peat.
图片说明：安德鲁·奈 (Andrew Ngai) 在周末赢得了两届冠军，也是三连冠的热门人选。
Eventually everyone gets settled, and the competition begins.
最终大家都安定下来，比赛开始了。
The night’s first case is called Excel Superheroes, designed by Grigolyunovich himself.
当晚的第一个案例名为 Excel Superheroes，由 Grigolyunovich 亲自设计。
In it, there’s a cast of superheroes, each with different strengths and weaknesses, and each player’s job is to forecast how they’ll do competing against one another in lots of different scenarios.
其中有一群超级英雄，每个人都有不同的优点和缺点，每个玩家的工作就是预测他们将如何在许多不同的场景中相互竞争。
Rose says go, and the most problematic thing about competitive Excel becomes blindingly obvious to me once again: it is damn near impossible to figure out what’s going on.
罗斯说走吧，竞争性 Excel 中最有问题的事情再次对我来说变得非常明显：几乎不可能弄清楚发生了什么。
All eight players are moving so fast and doing so many things with keyboard shortcuts and formulas that there’s practically no way to see what they’re doing until it’s already done.
所有八名玩家都移动得如此之快，并使用键盘快捷键和公式做了如此之多的事情，以至于在完成之前几乎无法看到他们在做什么。
What’s happening around me looks like a sport, it’s lit like a sport, and the anxiety levels suggest aggressive competition, but even the other competitors in the room can barely keep up.
我周围发生的事情看起来就像一场运动，它的灯光也像一场运动，焦虑程度表明竞争激烈，但即使是房间里的其他竞争对手也几乎跟不上。
They’re squinting at the screens in front of each workstation, trying to decipher each move.
他们眯着眼睛看着每个工作站前面的屏幕，试图解读每一个动作。
Really, they’re mostly just waiting for the score to update.
事实上，他们大多只是在等待分数更新。
In the commentary booth, du Soleil and Acampora are doing their best to keep up and explain the maneuvers, but watching eight spreadsheet whizzes simultaneously requires multitasking brainpower I’m not sure any human can attain.
在解说室里，杜·索莱和阿坎波拉正在尽最大努力跟上并解释这些操作，但同时观看八个电子表格高手需要多任务处理的脑力，我不确定任何人都能做到这一点。
And if you can figure out what =SUM(CODE(MID(LOWER(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(C3,”:”,””) means in the few seconds it’s shown onscreen, well, you should come to Vegas next year.
如果你能在屏幕上显示的几秒钟内弄清楚 =SUM(CODE(MID(LOWER(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(C3,”:”,””)) 的含义），那么你明年应该来维加斯。
Like the rest of the crowd, I mostly resort to scoreboard-watching and cheer every time the commentators go back to show a particularly cool formula or trick a player did.
和其他人一样，我主要依靠观看记分牌，并在每次解说员回来展示球员的特别酷的公式或技巧时欢呼。
The scores change wildly and frequently: a lot of players tend to solve a whole level at once, adding dozens or hundreds of points to their total in an instant.
分数变化剧烈且频繁：许多玩家倾向于一次性解决整个关卡，瞬间为总分增加数十或数百分。
They’ll jump from last to second to sixth to first, and as the clock ticks down, things move even faster.
他们会从最后跳到第二、第六、再到第一，随着时间的流逝，事情进展得更快。
Even if you don’t know what’s happening — and I really don’t — it’s still pretty intense.
即使你不知道发生了什么——我真的不知道——它仍然非常激烈。
There’s also drama immediately.
马上就有戏剧了。
Ngai, the reigning champ, is eliminated after the first seven and a half minutes.
卫冕冠军 Ngai 在前七分半钟后就被淘汰。
But when Rose taps him on the shoulder to let him know he’s done, Ngai can’t believe it.
但当罗斯拍拍他的肩膀让他知道自己已经完成时，奈简直不敢相信。
He’d gotten a bonus question and solved the first two levels already, and he was in last?
他已经得到了一道奖励题，并且已经解决了前两关，而他却排在最后？
From my view in the stands, he had a point: the scoreboard had shown him at the bottom of the scoreboard even as it showed him completing things, then it briefly jumped him to third place, before knocking him down again.
从我在看台上的角度来看，他说得有道理：记分牌显示他在记分牌的底部，尽管它显示他完成了一些事情，然后短暂地把他跳到了第三位，然后再次把他击倒了。
Ngai walks offstage, incredulous, and is obviously mad as Grigolyunovich quizzes him to figure out what happened.
恩盖（Ngai）走下舞台，感到难以置信，当格里戈柳诺维奇（Grigolyunovich）询问他到底发生了什么时，他显然很生气。
For the rest of the heat, the competitors seem to be constantly checking the scoreboard.
在剩下的比赛中，参赛者似乎一直在检查记分牌。
Every time Chatain submits an answer, he spins around in his chair to make sure it shows up; Scharl and others also pointedly check to make sure they’re getting things right.
每次查坦提交答案时，他都会在椅子上旋转以确保答案显示出来；沙尔和其他人也有针对性地进行检查，以确保他们做对了。
In the last minute or so of the round, the rankings jump around, and with only a few seconds before the round ends, Pomykalski suddenly puts 204 additional points on the board, dropping Chatain from fourth to fifth and out of the competition.
在本轮比赛的最后一分钟左右，排名发生了跳跃，在比赛结束前几秒钟，波米卡尔斯基突然在排行榜上额外获得了 204 分，将查坦从第四名降到了第五名，并退出了比赛。
As du Soleil screams in disbelief, Chatain appears shocked.
当杜索雷难以置信地尖叫时，查坦显得很震惊。
“I looked at the screen when I heard a shout” with about 30 seconds remaining, he tells me right after he walks offstage, “but the audience was on the screen!
“当我听到一声喊叫时，我看着屏幕”，距离舞台还剩大约 30 秒，他走下舞台后告诉我，“但观众都在屏幕上！
When the scores came back, there were only two seconds left.”
当比分回来时，只剩下两秒钟了。”
The second semifinal, a case based on a bunch of numbers games, is less chaotic.
第二场半决赛是一个基于一堆数字游戏的案例，没有那么混乱。
Lianna Gerrish, the only woman in the top 16, is eliminated first.
莉安娜·格里什（Lianna Gerrish）是前 16 名中唯一的女性，她首先被淘汰。
Early, the favorite to win, writes a wildly complicated two-line formula into a cell that ends in six parentheses and impresses all the experts in the room.
厄尔利是最有希望获胜的人，他在一个以六个括号结尾的单元格中写入了一个极其复杂的两行公式，这给房间里的所有专家留下了深刻的印象。
There is a pair of brothers in this heat — Harry and Dan Seiders, who I’m told are very competitive with one another — and at one point, Dan is eliminated, but Rose accidentally taps Harry on the shoulder instead.
在这场激烈的比赛中，有一对兄弟——哈利和丹·赛德斯，据我所知，他们彼此之间的竞争非常激烈——丹一度被淘汰，但罗斯不小心拍了拍哈利的肩膀。
Early wins, to no one’s surprise, and the eight-person final is set.
早早获胜，不出意外，八人决赛已定。
We take a brief break, and then it’s time for the last round.
我们短暂休息一下，然后就到了最后一轮比赛的时间了。
After much deliberation with the organizers and the other contestants, Ngai is allowed back in.
经过与组织者和其他参赛者深思熟虑后，Ngai 被允许重新参赛。
Whatever went wrong was about the score-keeping system, not Ngai’s answers.
问题出在记分系统上，而不是恩盖的答案上。
But now there are nine competitors and eight computers, so Scharl is shunted offstage to one of the computers around the arena, where he dutifully reloads his setup, searches “Taylor Swift playlist” on YouTube, dons his headphones, and signals he’s ready to go.
但现在有 9 名参赛者和 8 台计算机，因此沙尔被转移到舞台外的一台计算机上，在那里他尽职尽责地重新加载他的设置，在 YouTube 上搜索“泰勒·斯威夫特 (Taylor Swift) 播放列表”，戴上耳机，并表示他已准备好出发。
The crowd chants, “Three, two, one, Excel!” and the final begins.
人群高呼“三、二、一，Excel！”决赛开始了。
The final case comes courtesy of one of the event’s sponsors, video game Eve Online .
最后一个案例由该活动的赞助商之一——视频游戏 Eve Online 提供。
In it, each competitor is mining asteroids, building fleets of spaceships, and dealing with market prices for various materials.
在其中，每个竞争对手都在开采小行星，建造宇宙飞船舰队，并处理各种材料的市场价格。
Their job is to calculate various requirements and costs for building a single ship, then for building the whole fleet, then actually working out how to acquire minerals from asteroids around the universe.
他们的工作是计算建造一艘船的各种要求和成本，然后计算建造整个舰队，然后实际研究如何从小行星上获取矿物质。
It’s hugely complicated: Brandon Moyer, the first finalist eliminated, tells Rose that “I have no idea what that case even was.”
事情非常复杂：第一个被淘汰的决赛选手布兰登·莫耶 (Brandon Moyer) 告诉罗斯，“我根本不知道那个案子是什么。”
But the others charge along, at least for a while.
但其他人至少在一段时间内继续前进。
By about the fourth of the case’s seven levels, nearly everyone seems to stall out — some go back to their initial model and try to solve the whole thing a new way, while others just start trying to attack bonus questions.
到了案件七个级别中的第四个级别时，几乎每个人似乎都陷入了停滞——有些人回到了最初的模型并尝试以新的方式解决整个问题，而另一些人则开始尝试解决奖励问题。
Early, at one point, looks back to check the scoreboard, only to see his own face on the big screen — he’s just been eliminated in fourth place.
早些时候，有一次，他回头查看记分牌，却在大屏幕上看到了自己的脸——他刚刚以第四名的身份被淘汰。
As he stands up to leave the stage, Rose says he looks a little frazzled.
当他站起来离开舞台时，罗斯说他看起来有点疲惫。
How does he feel?
他感觉如何？
“A little frazzled, yeah,” Early replies.
“是的，有点疲惫，”厄尔尔回答道。
Image caption: The youngest finalist in Vegas, Patrick Chatain lost in heart-breaking fashion.
图片说明：帕特里克·查坦 (Patrick Chatain) 是维加斯最年轻的决赛入围者，他以令人心碎的方式落败。
The final three players are Ngai, Michael Jarman, and Willem Gerritsen.
最后三名选手是 Ngai、Michael Jarman 和 Willem Gerritsen。
Ngai took a commanding lead almost immediately in the round and never let up.
Ngai 在本轮比赛中几乎立即就取得了绝对领先，并且从未放松过。
With about 50 seconds left in the round, Gerritsen, who has been staring blankly at his screen for a while, just throws his hands up and gives up.
比赛还剩50秒左右，一直盯着屏幕发呆的格里森举起双手放弃了。
A few seconds later, Ngai takes off his headphones and looks over at Jarman, making sure there’s no magic last-second comeback in the works.
几秒钟后，Ngai 摘下耳机，看着贾曼，确保最后一秒不会出现神奇的逆转。
There isn’t: Jarman stands up and, along with Gerritsen, starts congratulating Ngai.
事实并非如此：贾曼站起来，和格里森一起开始祝贺恩盖。
Rose counts down the time, and his voice cracks as he shouts for “our new Microsoft Excel World Champion, Andrew Ngai!” Ngai walks to the front of the stage, waving to the crowd, before thanking all the other competitors and brushing off the “technical difficulties” from the semifinal.
罗斯倒计时，声音沙哑，高喊“我们新的 Microsoft Excel 世界冠军，魏恩德！”魏走到舞台前，向观众挥手致意，然后感谢所有其他参赛者，并摆脱了半决赛中的“技术困难”。
“For the team that organized it,” he says, “don’t feel bad; these things happen.
“对于组织这次活动的团队来说，”他说，“不要感到难过；这些事情都会发生。
It worked out in the end!”
终于成功了！”
For such a huge moment, it’s over pretty fast.
对于这样一个重要的时刻，它结束得很快。
There’s no drawn-out celebration, no “I’m going to Disney World!” moment, no post-game analysis.
没有旷日持久的庆祝活动，也没有“我要去迪士尼世界！”暂时不做赛后分析。
There’s just a quick trophy presentation for both these finals and the financial modeling competition, which Lau won — he goes up and collects a trophy he previously told me he didn’t even want, along with a championship ring I’m told he specially requested.
决赛和刘获胜的金融建模比赛都有一个简短的奖杯展示——他走上前去，领取了一个他之前告诉我他根本不想要的奖杯，还有一枚冠军戒指，据我所知，他特别要求了一枚冠军戒指。
Then Ngai is given his trophy and the large championship belt, which is so big it barely stays in place around his waist.
然后，Ngai 获得了奖杯和宽大的冠军腰带，这条腰带太大了，几乎无法固定在他的腰部。
Rose thanks everyone in the arena and on the livestream, tells people to come win the championship for themselves next year, and says goodnight.
罗斯感谢赛场上和直播中的所有人，告诉人们明年要为自己赢得冠军，并道晚安。
The players migrate over to the bar, and before long, folks start to filter out.
玩家们纷纷涌向酒吧，不久之后，人们就开始离开。
They have jobs to get back to, family vacations to continue in Vegas.
他们还有工作要回去，家人要在维加斯继续度假。
Just before I leave the arena, all the finalists, broadcasters, and organizers gather onstage to take a few pictures.
就在我离开赛场之前，所有决赛入围者、转播商和组织者都聚集在舞台上拍了几张照片。
Du Soleil crouches in front of the group, and Ngai holds up his trophy.
杜索雷蹲在大家面前，恩盖举起他的奖杯。
Lau, still in sunglasses and still with the American flag draped over his arm, holds up his prize, too.
刘仍然戴着墨镜，手臂上还挂着美国国旗，也举起了他的奖品。
This group will go down in history as one of two things.
这个团体将作为两件事之一载入史册。
They could be the first generation of a new sport, the ones who turn Excel from a work tool to a playing field and change the way the world looks at spreadsheets.
他们可能是一项新运动的第一代人，他们将 Excel 从工作工具变成了竞技场，并改变了世界看待电子表格的方式。
Or they could be just a group of friends and colleagues who like to play games together — but instead of playing Fortnite or Catan , they play Excel.
或者他们可能只是一群喜欢一起玩游戏的朋友和同事，但他们不玩《堡垒之夜》或《卡坦岛》，而是玩 Excel。
Like a lot of folks in the room that night, I think I’ve come to hope for the first outcome but would bet on the second.
就像那天晚上在场的很多人一样，我想我已经开始希望第一个结果，但我会押注第二个结果。
These are the world’s best spreadsheeters, able to turn a chaotic universe into rows and columns and then bend that universe to their will, but the prize for Excel excellence is much higher at the office than it will ever be in the arena.
他们是世界上最好的电子表格专家，能够将混乱的宇宙变成行和列，然后将这个宇宙弯曲到他们的意愿，但 Excel 卓越在办公室的奖励比在竞技场上要高得多。
Even the competitors mostly seem happy to spend a weekend doing a Tiger Woods impression before going back to their real lives and real jobs.
就连参赛者也似乎很乐意花一个周末模仿老虎伍兹，然后再回到现实生活和工作中。
Nobody practices Excel to get famous.
没有人练习 Excel 是为了出名。
Grigolyunovich, meanwhile, is already thinking about next year.
与此同时，格里戈柳诺维奇已经在考虑明年的事情。
There will be bigger prize pools — though probably still not enough to get Lau to play — plus more wrinkles in the earlier rounds and more chances for new people to get involved.
将会有更大的奖池——尽管可能仍然不足以让刘参加比赛——加上前几轮的更多皱纹以及更多新人参与的机会。
But tonight, in an honest-to-goodness arena, there was a cheering crowd and real stakes and nonstop drama.
但今晚，在一个真正的竞技场上，有欢呼的人群、真正的赌注和不间断的戏剧。
Maybe the Excel World Championship will never be mainstream.
也许Excel世界锦标赛永远不会成为主流。
Maybe the celebrities in this room won’t ever be celebrities outside of it.
也许这个房间里的名人在外面永远不会是名人。
But Grigolyunovich proved something to himself tonight.
但格里戈柳诺维奇今晚向自己证明了一些事情。
Spreadsheets can be anything.
电子表格可以是任何东西。
They can even be sports.
它们甚至可以是运动。
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