Senior & Junior Maths Challenges

Last week, Caterham School held the Senior and Junior House Maths Challenges. It was a great opportunity for all the pupils passionate about maths to compete and engage with difficult and challenging questions.

Each House had a team of four and the competition was split into three rounds. The first round was a group round where 10 questions (each one worth six marks) were given to the teams for 25 minutes. The strategies that the houses followed were different, some of them decided to work individually, some of them in groups. The second round, and the most exciting one, was a cross-number, which is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries which consist of numbers rather than words, and clues being mathematical problems. The final round was a shuttle round were the teams are split into pairs and each pair needs the answer from the other pair to attempt their question.

In the Senior competition by the end of the first round Boarders had a comfortable lead followed by Ridgefield. In the second round a lot of houses stepped up and despite the fact that the Boarders were way ahead three Houses (Lewisham, Ridgefield and Newington) were separated by only two marks in the pursue of the second place! Also the other three houses (Aldercombe, Harestone and Underwood) were tied for the positions 5-7. In the last round the Boarders and Ridgefield performed superbly getting the first two places!

The final Senior Standings were:

First: Boarders 110 points

Second: Ridgefield 65 points

Third: Lewisham 62 points

Fourth: Newington 54 points

Fifth: Underwood 49 points

Joint Sixth: Aldercombe and Harestone 43 points

In the Junior competition Aldercombe with a superb performance in the first two rounds was in the lead with 60 points and Underwood (47), Newington and Lewisham (41) were in pursuit of the first place. The shuttle round was very exciting and despite a superb performance by Underwood and Lewisham, Aldercombe managed to get first place.

The final Junior Standings were:

First: Aldercombe 69 points

Second: Underwood 63 points

Joint Third: Lewisham and Newington 56 points

Fifth: Harestone 41 points

Caterham School and in particular the maths department would like to congratulate all the pupils involved in the House Maths Challenge. They were brilliant and super excited with the event!

Michail Dimakos