RESULTS OF THE 1994 WORLD MEMORY CHAMPIONSHIP
(Only gold, silver and bronze medalists were listed)

Tony Buzan and Reymond Keen
MEMORIZATION OF A 2000-DIGIT NUMBER
The competitors were allowed 60 minutes to memorize the number and 45 minutes to recall it. 1. Dominic O’Brien 1080 digits
2. Jonathan Hancock 780 digits
3. Philip Bond 430 digits
MEMORIZATION OF NAMES AND FACES
Competitors were shown faces with names underneath for 15 minutes. Then they were shown the faces again without names and in a new order. Competitors then had to put the memorized names to the faces within 20 minutes. 1. Jonathan Hancock 140
2. Dominic O’Brien 133
3. James Lee 81
MEMORIZATION OF RANDOM WORDS
500 words were presented in numbered columns to the competitors who memorized them for 15 minutes. They were allowed 20 minutes in which to write down the words. 1. Dominic O’Brien 102
2. Patrick Colgan 100
2. Jonathan Hancock 100
MEMORIZATION OF A NUMBER SPOKEN ALOUD
300 numbers were read out and the contestants had 30 minutes to recall the number by writing it down. The procedure was repeated three times, which each competitor’s best score noted. 1. Dominic O’Brien 142
2. Jonathan Hancock 60
3. James Lee 34
MEMORIZATION OF 12 PACKS OF SHUFFLED CARDS
Contestants were given 60 minutes to memorize as many packs of cards as they could. If they made a mistake in any pack, they lost half of that pack (two mistakes and they lost the whole pack). 1. Dominic O’Brien 494
2. Jonathan Hancock 384
3. Melik Duyar 199
SPEED MEMORIZATION OF A RANDOM NUMBER
Competitors were given 5 minutes to memorize a string of 500 numbers and then had to write down as many as they could remember. 1. Dominic O’Brien 157
2. Jonathan Hancock 140
3. Philip Bond 90
MEMORIZATION OF PAINTINGS AND IMAGES (Photographic Memory)
Competitors were asked to memorize 24 images. Then they were shown 80 images including the original 24 (many of the images were similar). The competitors had to identify which of the 80 they had seen before. They also had to note whether each of the 24 images was shown as when first seen, or whether it had been flipped so that it was the opposite way round. Thus 48 maximum points were available. 1. Melik Duyar 34
2. Natacia Diot 32
3. Ian Docherty 30
3. Jonathan Hancock 30
MEMORIZATION OF A BINARY NUMBER
Competitors were given 30 minutes to memorize a 2000 digit binary number (1 and 0 in a random sequence). They then recalled the number by writing it down. 1. Dominic O’Brien 1296
2. Jonathan Hancock 1140
3. Philip Bond 750
MEMORIZATION OF UNKNOWN TEXT
Contestants were given 40 lines of previously unseen text to memorize within 15 minutes. They then had 15 minutes in which to recall the lines, with no spelling or punctuation mistakes. If they had made an error in any line, the words in that line were not included in the final total of words memorized. 1. Natacia Diot 149
2. Jonathan Hancock 114
3. Patrick Colgan 106
FLIGHT DISK CHALLENGE
Competitors had to memorize 800 items of travel information in sequence within 30 minutes and then write down as many as possible. If a competitor made a mistake, no points were scored for items correctly remembered after the error. 1. Jonathan Hancock 149
2. Kenneth Wilshire 121
3. Melik Duyar 90
SPEED MEMORIZATION OF A PACK OF CARDS
A shuffled pack of 52 cards had to be remembered as fast as possible, with each card being looked at in sequence. The competitors were only allowed to look at each card once (they could not go back once the next card had been turned over). 1. Jonathan Hancock 58.79 seconds
2. Dominic O’Brien 85.36 seconds
3. Creighton Carvello 183.68 seconds
 

Source: Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene, “Buzan’s Book of Genius”, Stanley Paul, London, 1994, p. 247.