On Tuesday 7 April, Anish (Year 9), Anthony (Year 8), Dexter (Year 8) and I participated in the Team Maths Challenge run by UKMT that was hosted by our own school. As the home side, we felt lots of pressure going into the tournament as schools throughout the region came with the aim of winning it all. It was the first Team Maths Challenge after COVID, so we could not wait to get started.

In the Team Maths Challenge, there are 4 different rounds. The first is a group round, where the whole team works together to solve ten questions, worth 6 marks each. The second round is a Crossnumber where the team is split into pairs. The challenge of this round is that one pair does the down squares and the other does the across squares, with very limited communication. The next is a shuttle round where pair A do questions 1 and 3 and pair B do questions 2 and 4. However, the questions depend on the answers that the other pair got. Finally, the relay round involves each pair taking turns to answer questions as they “walk safely” around the Recital Room.

We started off very strongly in the first round, getting answers and checking them with our teammates. These questions required lots of patience, but eventually we finished them all, and we ended the first round with 60 out of 60. We continued our form in the second round (which we all said was our favourite) and through some clever teamwork, we finished in record time, without making a single mistake, bringing our total score to 114/114. However, this is where we began to slow down. In the third round, we failed to get the bonus points two times as we were unable to complete the four questions within six minutes. A tricky question that we were unable to solve made us lose three more marks. It got tense as we thought we could not win unless we did really well in the final round: the Relay. We sped past the first 10 questions without making any mistakes. However, time pressure and challenging questions cut us down four marks. This left us on a total of 221 out of a possible 234.

All we could do was sit and hope that it would be enough. As the leaderboard was read out, tension grew at the table, but it all disappeared when Mr. Lissimore exclaimed, “In first place ... Wilson’s School.” We were all elated as we collected our first place certificates and prizes (a puzzle). Thank you to Mrs. Rata and Mr. Hudson for organising this for us.

Nishith, Year 9