Hans Woyda Competition Second Round

A report by Mr Cullen-Hewitt

I must admit that I felt a certain degree of confidence going into the second round of the Hans Woyda Mathematics Competition. Having scraped a narrow victory over SPGS last half term it seemed as if we had already fought off our most intimidating rivals from the group, and comparing scores from the first round matches supported that belief. However, I learnt many years ago never to put my guard down around a certain Mr James Ramsden, and with him at the helm of Godolphin and Latymer’s mathematics department, I made sure not to allow confidence to slip into complacency. As such, I arranged to have a final lunchtime meeting with the SPS team of Shyamak Sawant (Fourth Form), Aidan Wong (Sixth Form), Benjamin Atkinson (Lower Eighth) and Gabriel Treneman (Upper Eighth) to give them a pep talk and drum up some more team morale.

The Godolphin and Latymer team arrived at SPS around 4.30pm, giving me just enough time to arrange the tables in my room into my patented “Battle Chevron” layout and, after some short introductions, we dove into the starter questions.

St Paul’s started strong and built up an early lead, but a lack of familiarity with the volume and surface area of cones stumped our two Eighth Formers in the geometry section, which stalled our progress. Godolphin and Latymer put in a solid performance in the mental arithmetic questions, preventing us from being able to pick up many bonus points, and both teams did impressively well in the team section, with St Paul’s barely coming out on top (despite making five times as many mistakes)!

After the calculator section (which optimistically valued the pound at $1.23!) garnered mixed performances from both teams, St Paul’s kicked into higher gear and powered through a flawless set of algebra and calculus questions. The lead wasn’t insurmountable going into the race, and some silly mistakes (including a case of both competitors failing to Read The Full Question!) meant that St Paul’s only managed to get 6 out of 16 possible points on the last 8 questions. However, it wasn’t enough of a setback to allow Godolphin and Latymer to close the gap, and so it was that my confidence was vindicated with a highly impressive 47 – 30 victory for SPS.

We look forward to sharing the final match report of term when we face Latymer Upper on Thursday 8 December, also at home. Special thanks should go to Benjamin Atkinson for stepping in to fill Neil Prabhu’s shoes at the last minute.