The WMSC marking rules event by event: why one wrong digit halves a row, how words, names and cards are marked, how ties are broken, and what to practise.
Memory championship scoring rewards two things at once: how much you can memorize and how cleanly you can recall it. Most beginners focus on the first and lose points on the second. This guide walks through how the World Memory Sports Council (WMSC) marks each type of event, how mistakes cost points, and what that means for how you should practice.
In Speed Numbers and Hour Numbers, digits are laid out in rows of 40. Each row is scored on its own:
The last row you write is treated differently, because nobody memorizes exactly to the end of a row. If it is incomplete and every digit is right, you score one point per digit. With one mistake you score half the digits recalled, rounded up: 29 digits with one error is 14.5, which becomes 15. With two mistakes it scores nothing.
Binary Numbers works the same way with rows of 30, and blanks are marked as zeros. Hour Cards uses the same idea with each 52-card pack as one row: 52 points for a perfect pack, 26 with one mistake, 0 with two or more.
Because a missing digit already counts as a mistake, never leave a gap you could guess. Leaving it blank costs exactly what a wrong guess costs, and a guess might be right. There is also no negative marking on numbers, so writing something is never worse than writing nothing.
The second lesson is about training. A row you are 95% sure of is worth 40 points. A row where you slip twice is worth nothing, however many digits were correct. That is why serious competitors drill for clean rows rather than raw volume. Our Speed Numbers drill breaks your result down row by row so you can see exactly where the points went, and how to read your memory drill results shows you what to do with that breakdown.
Words are scored in columns of 20, using the same all-or-half-or-nothing structure: 20 points for a perfect column, 10 for one mistake, 0 for two or more, and no penalty for columns you skip.
There is one useful wrinkle. If you clearly memorized a word but spelled it wrong, you lose the point for that word only, and it does not count as a mistake against the column. A column of 19 correct words plus one misspelling scores 19, not 10. A wrong word, a missing word, or a plural swapped for a singular is a memory mistake and does halve the column.
Names and Faces is scored more gently. You earn a point for each correctly spelled first name and a point for each correctly spelled surname, and you keep the points even if you only recall one of the two. Case and accents do not matter, an incorrect name scores zero, and a blank costs nothing. The total is rounded up.
The one thing to avoid is repeating yourself. Names are not repeated on the sheet, so writing the same name on the recall paper more than twice can cost half a point for each extra occurrence. Do not fill gaps with a name you already used.
Speed Cards is the one event scored by a formula, because the goal is a complete deck in the shortest time. A correctly recalled deck earns 11180 divided by your time in seconds raised to the power of 0.75, which gives 1000 points at 25 seconds. Try any time in the Speed Cards points calculator, and see why a perfect deck beats a fast one.
A score of 800 digits and a deck memorized in 30 seconds are not comparable on their own. Championship totals fix that with the Millennium Standard, which works like the decathlon. Each event has a standard set above the world record, and your score is converted with a simple ratio:
Championship points = (your raw score ÷ the event's standard) × 1000
Hitting the standard in an event is worth 1000 points, and a perfect ten-event championship would be 10,000. Spoken Numbers and Speed Cards use a curve rather than a straight line, so those two are not simple ratios. The standards are revised over time, so check the WMSC's current table rather than trusting a number you saw years ago. To convert a score, use the championship points calculator.
When two competitors finish on the same score, the rules break the tie rather than share the place. In the number and word events, ties are broken with "decision points", which count the correctly placed items in the rows or columns that scored zero. In practice this rewards the athlete whose failed rows were closer to right. In Names and Faces, ties go to whoever had the fewest incorrectly identified names. It is a small detail, but it is one more reason that recalling a row almost perfectly is better than leaving it blank.
Most events give you two trials and count the better one. That changes how you should approach the first trial. A cautious, accurate first run banks a solid score, and the second can then be a more ambitious attempt at a higher volume. If your first trial goes badly, the second is a fresh start rather than a continuation.
Yes. On paper, an arbiter marks what is written, so an unclear digit can be treated as a mistake. Practise writing your recall clearly, even when you are in a hurry.
No. Rows or columns you do not attempt cost nothing in the number and word events. The penalty comes only from mistakes inside rows you did attempt.
A wrong card, a missing card, or a card in the wrong position. Two cards swapped count as two errors, which is one reason a single moment of confusion can cost so much.
Convert it with the Millennium Standard. We list the target for every event in Millennium Standard targets for each event.
New to the events themselves? Start with the ten memory championship disciplines, then pick one to drill in training.
