Hans Woyda Semi-Final vs RGS High Wycombe

A report by Mr Cullen-Hewitt

When I discovered that we were playing Royal Grammar School High Wycombe in the semi-final, I was relieved to see that we had been designated the home side for the match. Blessed once again with the opportunity to rearrange my classroom into battle formation, I enlisted the help of one of my Upper Eighth sets to move the desks and chairs while I assembled the materials for what I knew could well be the last time in this year’s competition.

The SPS team of Michael Sydorenko (Fourth Form), Aidan Wong (Sixth Form), Haolin Zhao (Lower Eighth) and Gabriel Treneman (Upper Eighth) took their seats shortly after the arrival of the RGS team and the competition was soon underway.

A fairly close set of starter questions left SPS with a narrow lead early in the match, albeit with some lost points due to misread questions. However, the geometry section was a roaring success, with a set of questions themed around the Ukrainian Fields Medallist Maryna Viazovska bringing us some good luck and leaving SPS doubling RGS’s score with only two sections down. Some more challenging probability questions allowed RGS to claw back some ground, but after a strong performance on the team section (which consisted of finding solutions to Pell’s equation) we were still on top going into the latter half of the match.

Things hadn’t changed much after the calculator questions, but the team kicked things up a gear in the algebra and calculus section, nailing every single one of their questions and stealing points from almost all of the opposition’s failed questions as well. Going into the race, RGS were already too far behind to win and, while the last eight questions weren’t especially successful for either team, it was too late to change the result. At the end, SPS beat RGS 47-27 and sailed through to the final.

Congratulations to the pupils involved and we look forward to the final in the coming weeks.

Below is an example question from this round of the competition: