Competitive Problem Solving

On Tuesday, we attended a local UKMT Team Maths Challenge (which has been in hiatus for a few years). Teams from schools in the area were invited for an afternoon of competitive problem solving in Reigate. Two Third Year pupils (Yolanda C and Ian W), as well as two from Second Year (Albert C and Leonid P) were chosen to represent Caterham in this competition.

We warmed up with a couple of simple maths questions before the official start. The four of us were faced with ten questions in the group round. This was overall fairly well done – losing marks only to question 10, scoring 54.

This was followed by the “crossnumber”. We were split into two pairs, one pair receiving the down clues and the other receiving the across clues. Although not permitted to communicate, we worked together and attempted to fill in as much of the crossnumber as we could.

Then came the “shuttle round”. This was, again, done in pairs. It consisted of four questions: four parts to a question. One pair received the odd questions and the other received the even questions. The answer from the previous question was required to solve the one following it, so accuracy was critical.

Last was the head-to-head round. Faced against another school (Epsom College), we were given pairs of numbers and required to figure out the connection or the link between the pairs. The pupils who answered the question alternated between the two schools and Caterham only narrowly lost this round.

Caterham was placed 7th overall. Thank you to Dr Kemp for supervising this event, and to Dr Langdon for driving us and providing lunch. Also, many thanks to the Maths department at RGS who created the questions and hosted this event.

Albert C and Yolanda C