St Paul’s Prep School Win the Maths Battle Grand Final

Maths Battle Grand Final at King’s College London – Saturday 6 June 2026 – By Mr Rowan

As the team of Nael A, Qicheng C, Dillon J, Austin J, Arjun P, and Zachary W walked in to King’s College London there was a video on Euler’s Characteristic Formula played on screen. The boys initial hesitancy in the grand yet unfamiliar surroundings melted away into warm laughter as they were greeted by this old friend which had seen them home in the previous round.

This being their fourth battle, the SPPS team quickly settled into proven roles, even insisting that they sit around the table in the same order while solving (for efficiency’s sake rather than superstition’s, of course). Zachary and Qicheng paired up well, and Dillon and Austin worked collegiality, with Arjun and Nael vocally insisting on high standards and stress testing the whole team’s solutions.

We lost the Captain’s Challenge, as in all previous rounds, unlucky to find the other team had previously memorised perfect powers with the most unique digits.

This time most other teams were All Star teams, each with the top pupils from a mix of schools and who had trained together regularly at weekends. It is a credit to the depth of brilliance among SPPS mathematicians that we could field a team of six on our own. The standard was higher than ever in our first match of the day, not just in the problems but also shown by the Question Master who interrogated Zachary, Arjun, Dillon and Nael extensively on every claim they made. Austin’s elegant solution, however, left no room for challenge, by child nor adult, and Qicheng felt rightly aggrieved not to be allowed to voice his dissatisfaction when his opposite number gave more of an example than a proof to Problem 5. The 44-28 scoreline made it inconsequential and thoughts moved swiftly on to the final.

After being informed the opposition had provided solutions to all six questions, the faces of the SPPS team remained respectful and excited about the challenge. This was the final. These two teams had beaten all before them. Of course they had all the solutions. But SPPS had more.

Working so efficiently as a team in the solving hour, they had ample time to spare which they spent on refining their presentation, tightening their proofs, and identifying any potential holes in how the other team might solve the problems. Steely swords and stout shields for the final battle ahead.

The Captain’s Challenge was duly lost, this time by giving a lookalike difference of two squares misidentified as a Mersenne prime (1 less than 2 to the power 32) in an attempt to give the largest prime, beaten anyway by the opponent’s repunit string of nineteen 1s.

Problems 6, 4, 5, 1, and 3 were solved with aplomb by both teams despite judicious use of timeouts and great effort towards the ever more desperate search for an opportunity to challenge, particularly by SPPS. They came closest on Problem 1 when Zachary rejected the solution unless his opponent could prove that Odd x Odd = Odd in all possible cases, which was ultimately shown despite Zachary’s protestations that he would have preferred the use of algebra over that of prime factorisation and the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.

With the battle on serve at 36-24 to SPPS the pressure on our opponents to demonstrate mastery over Problem 2 and take the match to a tie break was intense. Too intense in the end for the young lady at the board as she lost faith in her logic partway through and stalled. With no timeouts left with which her team could support her, Dillon swooped in and delivered a wonderfully neat algebraic solution to take full marks and the overall victory 48-24.Congratulations to the St Paul’s Prep School team of Nael A, Qicheng C, Dillon J, Austin J, Arjun P, and Zachary W for coming through two maths battles in one day but also for the months of effort and preparation they have put into their victory.

Mr Rowan
Acting Head of Mathematics St Paul’s Prep