Like a spelling bee, but instead of memorizing semi-useless words, contestants can memorize semi-useless numbers instead.
Early rounds are easy: Pi, e, square root of 2, etc. and you only have to recite them to 10 decimal places.
But in later rounds, hope you have the cube roots memorized up to 1000! <- exclamation point not factorial -- because there's no telling what irrational number they will ask you.
No time to compute it in your head either, because there's no stalling ("could you use it in a sentence, please") like there is in a regular spelling bee.-- phundug, Jun 02 2006 We had to remember the physical constants (pi, e, c, g, h, etc.) for one or other of the A-levels. Or maybe it was our university exams.-- DrCurry, Jun 02 2006 you learn something new every day, [DrC], I thought you were American..-- neilp, Jun 02 2006 random, halfbakery