An Irishman Wins the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2025 — Not Without a Bit of Drama!
The Microsoft Excel World Championship has just wrapped up in Las Vegas, USA — and the title went to a representative of small but proud Ireland, Mr. Diarmuid Early.
He scored 1,250 points, overtaking his competitor from Australia. This guy can type anything into Excel faster than pretty much anyone else — including, apparently, his own traditional Irish name.
The organizers of the championship, however, didn’t manage quite as well. The award ceremony ended with an awkward mishap. As the champion, Diarmuid won $5,000 and was ceremoniously presented with a giant check — issued to a certain “Diarmu[_]d.”
???
The issue, of course, is that although the United States is an English-speaking country, the spelling (let alone pronunciation) of Irish names remains a mystery to many. And there’s no guarantee that the person filling out the winner’s name wasn’t someone from faraway India or Brazil.
And so the name Diarmuid (“unjealous and pure of heart”) somehow turned into Diarmud.
I doubt the mix-up escalated into a full-blown scandal — judging by Diarmuid’s victorious smile. If anything, the story just gained extra publicity.
It’s also nice to see someone from Ireland take the win — and to know there are still people who can do things with their own hands, instead of relying on scripts and AI for everything.
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