By Hiran de Silva
For the past two years I’ve been running a different kind of Excel challenge.
Not formula puzzles.
Not Sunday brain-teasers.
Not “find the clever trick”.
Something else.
And the results have been… fascinating.
The Context
Many excellent creators — Crispo, Omid, Vijay Verma, and others — run daily or weekly Excel challenges.
They receive dozens of solutions.
People engage.
People compete.
People experiment.
That tells us something important about the Excel community.
But two years ago I started posting a different class of challenge.
And something unexpected happened.
The Challenges
1️⃣ REG Call Handler Challenge (2024)
My first challenge was based on a real operational business problem.
Response:
- Zero working solutions
- Numerous comments saying:
“This can’t be done with Excel.”
When I later demonstrated the working solution:
👉 Those who said it was impossible did not return to engage.
Interesting.
2️⃣ Eurovision School Board Challenge (May 2024)
Posted the Sunday after the Eurovision Song Contest.
A topical scenario turned into an Excel systems problem.
Response:
- Zero solution attempts
- One comment suggesting:
“This isn’t a job for Excel — use Power Automate.”
But again:
- No proposed strategy
- No architectural thinking
- No solution.
3️⃣ Global Excel Airbus Challenge (Christmas 2024)
Inspired by booking airline seats.
Problem:
If passengers want to sit together, and you have access to the full seating allocation list — how would Excel manage it globally?
Response:
- Zero solutions suggested.
4️⃣ Budget Consolidation Challenge (2025)
I split this into two parts:
Part 1 — Consolidation
- Plenty of responses.
- Many techniques suggested.
Part 2 — Shape the output to what the customer actually wants
- Zero responses.
The moment the task moved from technique to system design, engagement vanished.
5️⃣ Friends Expenses Challenge (Private Expert Test)
This challenge was sent privately to selected experts.
Result:
- Zero working solutions.
- Several misunderstandings of requirements.
One participant even produced a video using the full dataset —
but without solving the actual problem or providing attribution.
6️⃣ Excel vs Database Real-Business Challenge
Posted within a discussion about whether Excel is a database.
Instead of debating theory, I applied the question to a real operational scenario.
Response:
- Silence.
- Zero engagement.
7️⃣ And Yet…
At the same time:
- Daily Excel puzzles flourish.
- Weekly challenges attract crowds.
- The Microsoft Excel World Championship draws massive attention.
So the question becomes unavoidable.
The Question Worth Pondering
Why do some Excel challenges attract dozens of solutions…
while others receive none?
This is not failure.
Quite the opposite.
This has been a total success — because it reveals something profound about Excel itself.
What These Experiments Reveal
There are two worlds of Excel:
World 1 — Popular Excel
- Functions
- Tricks
- Features
- Speed solving
- Edutainment
- Competitive puzzles
Highly engaging. Highly visible.
World 2 — Enterprise Excel
- Problem framing
- System architecture
- Data flow design
- Real business constraints
- Client–server thinking
- Delivering what the customer actually needs
Much harder to engage with.
And far rarer.
The absence of answers isn’t a rejection.
It’s evidence.
It shows where the largest opportunity in Excel actually lies.
Not in solving puzzles faster.
But in solving problems people believe Excel cannot solve at all.
👉 Over the next few posts, I’ll expand on what this means — and why this gap may be the biggest untapped opportunity in the Excel world today.
— Hiran de Silva
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