Hans Woyda Mathematics Competition – Knockout Round 1 vs St Paul’s Girl’s School

While the new year offers a period of reflection and renewal for many, with lofty goals and worthy resolutions helping to combat the potential melancholy of the long and frosty nights, it is nonetheless with a heavy heart that I replace the calendar each January. After all, at the beginning of every Spring Term, I am faced with the challenging and painful task of whittling down the 12 extraordinary pupils in the Hans Woyda squad to the 4 who will carry the school’s hopes of mathematical glory into the knockout rounds of the competition. It was a gruelling process, with not one but two tie-breakers required to distinguish between the UPPER Eighth candidates, but in the end, Zane Kumar (Fourth Form), Anango Prabhat (Sixth Form), Eason Shao (Lower Eighth) and Benjamin Atkinson (Upper Eighth) emerged as the final four.

After avoiding any shock defeats in the group stages we have returned this year to the main knockout competition, meaning that we started this term as one of the 16 schools vying for the coveted Hans Woyda trophy. For our first match, we had been placed against none other than St Paul’s Girls School, meaning that one of the two strongest teams in the competition was certain to be out before the quarter-finals. I warmed the team up with some past paper questions as we crossed the bridge last Thursday (making sure as ever not to allow the distraction to guide them into oncoming traffic), and they seemed to be in high spirits as we arrived at the girls’ school for the St Paul’s derby.

Once the pupils were all settled we kicked off with some fairly gentle starter questions. However, a small slip in some percentages allowed the girls to build a marginal two-point lead early on. Luckily, a few words of encouragement and a tricky set of geometry questions allowed the boys to pull level, and a flawless set of mental arithmetic questions (including the one question that tripped up the girls) allowed us to tip the scales back in our favour. The team question was a classic of the genre concerning Lagrange’s four-square theorem, where a couple of mistakes from the girls gave us the opportunity to extend our lead even further before tucking into the red velvet cake that had been generously supplied by the caterers.

With the pupils refreshed and the desks de-crumbed we dived into the calculator questions. These were equally successful on both sides, but a few more slips from the SPGS team allowed us to pick up even more points on the algebra and calculus sections (despite some challenging geometry towards the end!). This gave SPS a 7-point lead going into the race; a nice buffer, but we were by no means out of the woods yet. Indeed, my heart skipped a beat when both Zane and Anango rushed their questions and gave incorrect answers as a result as I knew they were still capable of closing the gap. Luckily, both questions evaded SPGS as well, and Eason and Benjamin got us home and dry with four questions to go. So it was that SPS ended up on top at the final whistle with a very impressive 51 – 40 victory.

Report written by: Samuel Cullen-Hewitt, Teacher of Mathematics