KEY POINTS:
The blindfold was on, stopwatches were at the ready, and - despite some obvious nerves - Elliot Nicholls' fingers were soon a blur on the keypad.
His first blindfolded text-messaging world record attempt was well under the required time, but contained an error - which meant the effort was discounted.
The next attempt was error free and, at 51 seconds, constituted an unofficial record, but Elliot felt he could do better.
The 17-year-old student at John McGlashan College in Dunedin then smashed the world record for blindfolded text messaging by successfully entering 160 characters on his well-worn cellphone in just 45 seconds.
Elliot's rapid texting beat the previous record of 1m 23s, set by Andrea Fantoni, 22, in Milan last year.
For the attempt, Elliot was required to enter a finger-twisting phrase about "ferocious freshwater fish" on a standard phone without using the predictive text function.
"I was looking at the Guinness website and thought it would be cool to hold a record in something. I send a lot of texts, so it seemed like a good choice," he said.
In recent weeks, Elliot prepared for about 20 minutes each day, repeatedly entering the prescribed phrase, which he had memorised.
Aside from his record-attempt preparation was his usual practice of sending between 2000 and 4000 text messages monthly. He is on to his "sixth or seventh" cellphone.
Elliot's results were scrutinised by independent judges and timekeepers on Saturday for submission to the next Guinness World Records book.
- Otago Daily Times
