Intermediate House Maths Challenge

On Monday 14 May, Caterham School held the first Intermediate House Maths Challenge. Based on the UKMT Team Maths Challenge, this house event offered the opportunity to all pupils passionate about maths to compete and engage with difficult and challenging questions.

Each House had a team of four (two Third Year and two Fourth Year) and the competition was split into three rounds. The first round was a group round where 10 questions were given to the teams for 25 minutes. The strategies that houses followed were different. Some of them decided to work individually, some of them in groups. By the end of the first round, four houses (Boarders, Harestone, Lewisham and Newington) were extremely close, separated only by three points. The second round, and the most exciting one, was a crossnumber, 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 teams had 30 minutes to compete for a maximum 58 points and in that round the performance of Boarders was exceptional, which gave them the lead.

Entering the final round (relay) it was clear that Boarders had the advantage but only seven points separated the second and the fifth place. Newington performed superbly in this round but it wasn’t enough to challenge the Boarders. 

The final standings were:

First: Boarders 84 points

Second: Newington 71 points

Third: Lewisham 63 points

Fourth:  Ridgefield 59 points

Fifth: Harestone 55 points

5 Sixth: Underwood 46 points

Seventh: Aldercombe 38 points

Caterham School and in particular the maths department would like to congratulate all the pupils involved in the House Maths Challenge. We would also like to congratulate and thank the heads of houses and Mrs Dawrant for their support running this competition for the first time with the hope that it will become a classic one!

Mr Dimakos and Ms Scott