On April 21, twelve talented CDNIS Math Olympians arrived at the Discovery Bay International School. The Math Olympians were made up of top students from G3 to G5, who participated in weekly Math Olympiad meetings with the math coach; Ms. Ross. The group arrived at the venue via ferry. CDNIS was represented by 3 teams of 4. The mathematicians spent many hours preparing for this moment – training and practicing puzzles during lunch recess.
The competition consisted of 3 rounds. First, the Puzzle Round, where the teachers gave everyone several puzzles to solve – with 40 minutes to solve them. The puzzles were both area mazes and Futoshiki (a Japanese puzzle). The tricky part of the area maze was that we did not have to solve everything in the area maze; we just had to figure out a specific part. In our team, everyone felt a bit of panic, and “this doesn’t make sense!” crossed our minds. Once we realized that we just had to solve the part that was missing, we calmed down. We quickly finished the area mazes after we found out the trick.
Then we began working on the Futoshiki puzzles. There were 4×4 puzzle grids, 6×6 puzzle grids, and the hardest; 8×8 puzzle grids. We had to be extra careful on these puzzles, because points were added for every correct square, and deducted for every wrong answer. The harder the puzzle is, the more points you add and deduct. We solved all except for 2 puzzles. A strategy we used was to focus on the easier and less risky ones, and then do the harder ones. Finally, the round ended. We spent the break eating snacks and chatting with our friends.
Next, we began the Collaboration Round; 24 advanced math questions for our teams to work out together. There were also 2 logic questions that were extremely challenging. In one of them, we had to figure out the places, names, and activities of fictional families with only a few vague clues. The 24 questions were split into 3 papers: one was 3 points each, another was 4 points each, and the last one was 5 points each. We decided to split up the work. We just managed to finish the advanced math questions and guessed the logic puzzles since there was no time left. Thankfully, no points could be deducted in this round. After the second round, we went to eat lunch and play in the playground for a little while.
Finally, we had the Speed Round, where the teacher projected a question and gave us 10 – 15 seconds to complete it. We wrote our answers on a sheet, which was collected at the end of the round. There were 20 questions in total. We argued over a few questions, but in the end, we always came up with a final answer. Some questions were challenging because we had to read the questions carefully. Unfortunately, one of our groups answered a question incorrectly, because they didn’t read the question carefully enough. While we were waiting for the final scores, we played games like Bottle Flip and used one of our friend’s toys to calm down.
The moment came when the winner of the competition was announced. Out of 22 teams of talented mathematicians, our G5 team (Raymond C, Ambrose I, Damian L, Amelia L) won 2nd place! We found out we got a perfect score on the Speed Round! Our total score was 333, just 12 points away from the winning team, with a score of 345 points. We felt happy and proud, but also a little bit surprised that we made it into the Top 3. Leaving the school with high spirits and our heads up high, we concluded that it was an enjoyable experience that we would like to participate in again.
