Long-time followers know the 2025 John Lance USAMC story well. last year, as a fresh-faced newbie, I put together a thorough training plan, worked hard for 7 months, and was rewarded with a 4th place finish at the USA Memory Championship finals.
this year i’m old and jaded. i started my dream job a few months ago and i absolutely love it, but it takes up a huge portion of my time and focus. more of my hair is falling out, i dropped a small box on my knee yesterday and have thought of nothing else since. someone recently said i was ‘cheugy.’ digesting red meat is getting tougher.
anyhow, all that to say i gotta be honest with myself. i don’t have the time or the patience to do this all “right” this year (or the passion, honestly. I’m looking forward to going back to trivia as my #1, but i still love this sport and i want a flippin’ seahorse on my mantel.)
last year in finals i was perfect in long-term and words and expect to do the same this year with very little extra time spent. I’m not even thinking about these until after qualifying, and aside from spending a week putting the long stuff in a palace, i don’t anticipate much time at all here.
so three steps really:
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qualify
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get through tea party
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beat @wesleytwiggs at double-deck.
something i’ve done before, something i haven’t, and something requires the highroll of a lifetime. so how will we do it?
Step 1: Qualify. Last year i was 10th of 12 that made it, and any of the 5-6 folks that were on the border could easily have overtaken me if some things changed. I need to improve my scores.
Cards, Images, Names, Numbers, Words.
Words and Images, i’ll see you guys the week of qualifiers. i know the pieces will be there.
Cards i’m sticking with my current setup, single-card PAO. i’m not that far from having my 1352 TIM half-list done, but i don’t plan to use it this year. Some practice will get me to 52/52 in ~60s on the day and i assume that will be fine, though there’s a bit of room to get even faster. even just 60s is a huge improvement over last year tho.
Numbers: it’s done! i have a 000-999! i’ll need to tune and practice and review going into next month, but i expect to have it usable on July 18. the qualifier scoring system makes numbers pretty low-leverage, but there is definitely improvement room. Last year i finished 14th in numbers with 80/80 in 2:56, an abysmal 73 seconds behind 13th place. Cleaning up even a minute there will give me a little breathing room, and who knows if i could maybe get even faster. lots of points here.
Names: some value in practicing this for Tea Party, too. But i’ll need to get going on this. it really, really is as easy as everyone says it is. look at a person. get a feature. connect it to the name. bang bang bang. it’s just, what do all those words i just said mean when it comes to how you specifically remember things. that’s all this sport is, lol. I was quite slow in this last year in my only perfect run, so I’ll want to work on this a LOT.
after qualifying, i’ll figure out the other steps. back soon for a baseline run. goals in qualifying are as follows, we’ll see if i can get anywhere close:
- Cards: 60s
- Images: 20s
- Names: 2:00
- Numbers: 1:30
- Words: 1:20
nice to climb back on the horse, let’s see how far it throws me 
the plan is to work on the highest-leverage stuff (ergo the title reference) and just ignore the things that felt like they wasted time last year. who knows.
seeya soon