Wilson's hosts UKMT Team Maths Challenge
Theo, Wojtek, Keynes and I took our seats in the Recital Room on Tuesday, keenly anticipating the Team Maths Challenge (TMC). It was a once (or twice?)-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we were keen to win.
Just before the start of the competition, we were given ten practice questions to warm ourselves up and we were confident after attempting all ten and finding them not too difficult. Before we knew it, the Group round (the first of the four) was about to begin. We were given ten questions, worth six marks each and 45 minutes to complete them. Upon first glance, most were fairly straightforward, but there was a clock-related question that had our whole team locked in a debate! Thankfully, we got that right – although we did lose two marks on one part when we calculated the wrong angle by accident. 58/60 was a very good start, considering the difficulty of the clock questions.
Next was the crossnumber, an interesting round. This was because, instead of the whole team working on it all together, one pair of two were given the “across” clues (Keynes and I) and the other the “down” clues (Wojtek and Theo). The fact that we couldn’t communicate added to the difficulty as certain clues relied on each other with some loops where two across or down clues relied on each other, making it more of a logic puzzle than just simple arithmetic. We were all relieved to see that we had gained the full 62 marks in that round, bringing us into the top five schools in the Regional Finals.
After a relaxing lunch break, we recommenced with the Shuttle round, in which one pair would get the first and third questions, and the other the second and fourth. However, as questions relied on previous answers, the only thing that a pair could do was to figure out some possible equations while the other pair were solving. This came in quite handy for my pair (Keynes and I) because, by figuring some out, we could immediately plug the answer in and do some simple arithmetic to figure out the answer to hand back over. We secured the full 60 marks again, which helped us come within reaching distance of first – all we had to do was not mess up at the end!
The last round was the most stressful and could determine the difference between first and second; Keynes told me that last year, Wilson’s won by one mark, showing how crucial each mark is in this competition. In this round, we had to give our teacher the answer we arrived at, before handing the next question to the other pair, on the other side of the room. We got off to a slow start, with the first six of thirty questions using up almost a quarter of our time. Thankfully, we came back in the latter questions, finishing all of them and collecting full marks with just seven minutes remaining, being the first team to do so.
After a stressful and anxious wait of about fifteen minutes, we were overjoyed to hear that we had won the TMC again, the second year in a row. It was a delightful experience on our part, but I must thank the teachers and the UKMT staff for making this possible. We won a UKMT custom-made Rubik’s Cube as a prize and qualified for the National Finals in June. However, on hearing that the final was in Manchester, a drive of over 3 hours, we were questioning how we early we would need to be at school to make it there!
Article written by Leo (Year 8)
Leo, Keynes, Wojtek and I participated in the Team Maths Challenge this week. When I first arrived in the Recital Room, I met with the rest of my team, and we began to work on some warm-up questions. We made it through these pretty easily, which gave us a confidence boost.
Then, Round 1, the Group Round began. In the Group Round, there were 10 questions which we immediately distributed between ourselves. Unfortunately, we got a question wrong and lost two marks as a result.
In the second round, a crossword with numbers instead of letters, we were split into two teams, Wojtek and I, and Leo and Keynes. We got through this round with little difficulty and still had ten minutes to spare.
The third round was the Shuttle Round, and we were again split into the same teams as for the "crossnumber". In the shuttle round, one team's answers depended entirely on the other team's answers. This made it harder as we had to work out whether the other group got a wrong answer and so we needed a high level of communication. However, we still got full marks in this round.
The final round was the Relay Round. This was the hardest round as it required us to solve questions and hand them in to the teacher located on the other side of the room under time pressure. We were split into the same two groups and at first, my team was struggling to get through the questions, but we made up for the time lost by going significantly faster through the last questions. We once again got full marks in this round.
In the end, we finished just two marks short of full marks which placed us in first place and put us into the national finals.”
Article written by Theo (Year 8)