Shrewsbury leads in Senior Team Maths Challenge Regionals

Shrewsbury School impressed at the Senior Team Maths Challenge Regionals, securing a flawless victory among 17 participating schools. 

On November 26th, a team of four, including Zara W (M, V), Hironari N (I, LVI), Kaisei T (Rt, LVI) and Dason T (Rt, UVI), represented the School at the Regional Final of the Senior Team Maths Challenge. Led by Dr Oakley, the team travelled up to Preston by train to the University of Lancaster School of Mathematics. Despite delays en route, they arrived ready to compete against 17 schools from across the region. 

The team challenge consisted of 3 rounds: the Group Round, the Crossword Round, and the Shuttle Round. In the Group Round, the team worked collaboratively on a set of ten problems to be completed within 40 minutes, with full communication allowed between members. In the final minutes, the last question proved challenging, causing a brief disagreement over the solution. In a rapid burst of reasoning, critique and defence, the team forced a breakthrough and locked onto a single solution. The full set was submitted within just ten seconds remaining, and achieved a perfect score. 

In the Crossword Round, the team split into two pairs, with one pair tackling the across clues and the other the down. Communication was permitted within each pair but not between them, adding a strategic layer to the challenge. Many clues relied on numbers provided by the other pair’s solutions, making precision on both sides crucial. Finishing in just over half the allotted time, the team achieved full marks. 

The Shuttle Round proved to be the most challenging of the three. Working again in pairs, each pair’s answer acted as the starting point for the next question tackled by the other pair. This created a relay of dependent solutions in which a single error could propagate through the entire set. Unlike the Crossword Round, answers were submitted all at once rather than marked sequentially, making accuracy and consistency absolutely critical. The team were briefly held up on the second shuttle set but recovered quickly and worked steadily through the remaining sets, earning all available bonus marks for finishing early as well as a full set of correct answers. 

With a clean slate, Shrewsbury School finished joint first, achieving a perfect score of 180 out of 180 alongside the University of Liverpool Maths School, and rounded off the day with a well-earned celebration with hot-honey dough balls at Pizza Express. The team now looks forward to the National Finals in Manchester this February. 

Dason T (Rt, UVI)