Rosie and the Excel Wars

=Welcome to the Excel World Championships

Today, we’re going to a place where Excel nerds act like NBA stars. That’s right, we’re headed to the Excel World Championships.

Picture this: high-energy competition, with Excel pros battling it out like they're in the NBA, except with pivot tables instead of three-pointers.

Fans from around the world come together to show their skills, learn cool tips, and celebrate all things spreadsheets.

People face off in fun, brain-twisting challenges—no dull finance stuff, just Excel in its purest form.

Let's watch Rosie tackle one of those challenges: the Treasure Hunt Case.

‍=The Backstory

You stumbled upon a treasure map while cleaning your great-grandparent's attic. The map is a data table with ten columns and ten rows.

Each cell contains a value known as a ‘Game Number’.

You need to write formulas and solve a series of challenges to uncover clues to the treasure.

The challenges start off easy, but don't get too comfortable!

Before you know it, things will ramp up, and you'll be scratching your head in no time.

=The First Challenge

Rosie has no problem answering this. Just ask her a question like:‍

“Help me find the number in the Treasure Map tab that corresponds to the value in cell D4.”‍

She has all the context she needs to look at the Treasure Map tab and understand what she’s looking at. In our case, a table of data with columns and rows.

She knows the INDIRECT formula is the best choice. It takes the value from one cell—in our case, the string "J10"—and uses that to find what's in cell J10 on the treasure map tab.

Rosie responds with the formula:

=INDIRECT("'Treasure Map'!" & G57)

=The Second Challenge

Okay, this starts to get a bit more complicated.

There are two inputs now:

First, the cell contains a string that references the location of a cell on a different tab.

Second, an arrow pointed in one of eight directions.

This is where I get amazed every day. 

Without additional information, Rosie correctly interprets the arrows as directions she needs to move in and incorporates this into the formula she writes.

We ask her something like:

“Help me write a formula that takes two inputs. The first input is cell D89, which references the Treasure Map tab. Then, take the value of cell H89, move in that direction, and return that value.”

In Rosie’s response, she leverages the LET function, a relatively new feature (introduced in March 2020) that allows you to define variables within a formula.

=Watch Rosie.ai leverage the power of Python

I was particularly excited to see Rosie seamlessly write a Python script to tackle a really hard problem.

Let me explain the challenge a bit more.

And please bear with me. It's important to understand what's being asked to fully appreciate how hard it would be to solve without Rosie.

To start, you’re given a list of arrows in one of eight directions.

Each position in the list has a value (1, 2, 3, and so on).

For each arrow (e.g., the up-right arrow), you need to find where it appears in the sequence, add up all those values, and return the arrow with the highest total value.

Honestly, I had to read this a few times to fully get what they were asking.

Here’s an example that might help.

Take one arrow, the up-right arrow

It appears in the sixth position (with a value of six), again in the eighth position (with a value of eight), and several more times later in the sequence. You need to do this for every arrow—find each position where it shows up, add those values together, and then return the arrow with the largest sum.

Yes, I could have solved this manually, but it would’ve taken hours. With Rosie, it only took a few minutes, showcasing how she uses Python to handle complex tasks quickly.

If you only watch one video, please watch this one.

See the magic for yourself:

=Want to see more?

Join me as I go through each of the seven questions in this case. With Rosie's help, I finished the case in 30 minutes (within the time allotted). 

You might notice some back-and-forth with Rosie. This is very common with modern chatbots. Working with Rosie is like tuning a radio—sometimes, you have to adjust a bit to find the perfect signal. It’s all about getting the details right so she can give the best answer.

=Join Us on the Journey

Click here to try Rosie out yourself with our interactive demo

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Thanks for reading!

Dennis Jiang

Cofounder and CEO

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