A great result at the UKMT Maths Team Challenge

On Wednesday March 15th a team consisting of Tom, myself, and two boys in the King's Bruton 3rd form went to Millfield for the UKMT team challenge. We had only met one of the boys, Rowan, the day before, so our collaboration as a team was still developing at best. Otherwise, we felt that we were a strong team.

Firstly, we had the Group Round. It consisted of 10 different questions, all of which were challenging, and consisted of all different spectrums of maths. In this all of these questions had 6 total marks,  but some had 2 different sections to them, worth 3 each. This we received 42 total marks, with most of our answers being correct. This was counted as the easiest round, but was one of our lesser rounds.

After this, we had the shuttle round. This consisted of 4 questions, of which were much simpler than the former round, that needed the answers to the questions before to solve them. We were in 2 pairs, with myself and Tom in separate pairs, so we had a full experience. There were 4 of these rounds, each lasting 8 minutes, each individual question was worth 3 marks, with 3 bonus marks for finishing within 6 minutes.

Thirdly, we had the cross number round. It was a regular cross number, with an 8x8 grid, but instead of us having all of the clues, we had one pair with the across clues, and one with the down. For this we accomplished 52 marks from 60, which we believe was the highest of all 30 teams, as well as finishing 13 minutes before the 45 minute timer had ended.

Finally, we had the relay round. This consisted of my pair moving to another table, with a pair from Queen's Taunton, and for our marker to be quite far away from us. The first pair started with a question, of which when they had answered it, they had to deliver a question to the other pair on their team. This cycle would continue, until 45 minutes were over. For this we achieved 40 marks, as each was worth 20 marks, and we correctly answered 20 of the 30 questions.

When all the marks had been collected up, we ended up coming 2nd place, joint with Sherborne Girls, and we were very happy with this result. We had not received 1st or 2nd in 10 years, and so this for us was an amazing feat- All the luck for next year!

By Isaac B - Hazlegrove Year 8