I told that story to my friend's daughter a couple of years ago. Next time I visited she was excited to tell me how she used it to win a sheet of stickers by betting one of her classmates she could add up the numbers faster than they could with a calculator. It was clever of her to add the calculator handicap into the mix. Makes me wonder if there are math hustlers outside of casinos.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/gausss-day-of-reck...
http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/gaussfiles/gauss-sni...
would have helped as well.