Senior boys get UCAS sorted - the City of London School

Friday October 15 2010
HANS WOYDA
City puts the
frighteners on
Westminster
mathematics:
Are they still
invincible?
Daniel Hu 5H Citizen puzzler
The Hans Woyda Competition is an interschool
maths competition in London. It is
named after a former head of maths at Kingston
Grammar School and has been around
for over 30 years. In the words of Mr Eade,
the Head of the Maths department, the competition
works like the Champions League.
There are 64 schools in 16 groups of 4. In
each group, they all play against each other
and the winner goes through to the knockout
rounds while the runner-up goes to the
plate competition. For both the main competition
and the plate, there are two knockout
rounds, then the semi-final, and then the
final.
Teams are made up of 4 players - a 1st to
3rd former, a 4th or 5th former, a J6 and
a S6 student, like house maths. Our team
was Nimrod Nehushtan from 3rd Form,
Daniel Hu from 5th Form, Alex Rigby from
J6, and Jonathan Berger from S6. There are
7 sections per match with a maximum of
around 70pts per team with 8 possible bonus
points. The average mark for a team per
match is around 35pts and marks above 45
are rare. The first section is a starters section
with individual questions of a 30 second
time limit, next a geometry section in
pairs - separated into 1st to 5th forms and J6
to S6 - with a 90 second limit. Then there is
an individual mental section, a team section
and then a break. After that is the calculator
section, the algebra section and finally the
dreaded race section.
Last year, we were drawn with St. Paul’s
Girl’s school in our group of 4 and were
destroyed by them 40-26. We came runners-up
in our group and progressed to the
plate competition but promptly lost to Bancroft’s!
This year we are looking to bounce
back from our defeat and do better. However,
we were drawn in a group with Westminster
School, who are the reigning champions
and masters of maths! Nevertheless,
I encouraged our team to stay positive and
though we would probably be thrashed 60-
20 or something, I introduced the possibility
of the match being close and even us
winning. But it was always unlikely.
We started well in the starters round with 8
simple questions with Westminster getting
8 and City getting 7. The geometry round
contained a very hard question for the 1st to
5th Formers which neither City nor Westminster
managed to work out, but both
teams received full marks for the other 3
questions. Next was the Mental Arithmetic
round with questions such as ‘There are 5.5
yards in a rod. There are 22 yards in a chain.
There are 10 chains in a furlong. How many
rods are there in a furlong?’ The answer
is 40 and had to be written down in one
minute. Surprisingly, both teams dropped
marks and the score before the team round
was Westminster 29 City 26. We were doing
very well and were getting close to my
target score of 30 already.
The team round was a fun question with a
simple idea. You had to make all the numbers
1 to 20 using the digits 1, 9, 6, 6 (because
2010 was another World Cup year
where England failed to make an impact)
in that order in five minutes. You were allowed
to use addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, square roots, and brackets.
We made 18 of them, missing out 17 and
19, which I quickly worked out, unfortunately
afterwards, and hoped Westminster
hadn’t done as well. Amazingly, they had
only made 17 and that gave us 5pts and
them 4pts. The score: Westminster 33 City
31.
We still had a chance to win it in the next
3 rounds and we continued, worried that
we would mess up. In the calculator round
there were some interesting questions. I had
one which had the answer:
A=123456789, B=123456789,
C=123456789, and you guessed it,
n=123456789. We were still only a few
points away with 28pts left to play for. In
the algebra round both teams managed 3
questions with a question for the J6 tripping
both schools up.
We went into the final, vital race round
nervous and scared, with the scores at Westminster
49 City 43, already a major success,
Page 5
School news
whether we won or lost, since it was against
Westminster. There were 16pts left to play
for, so there was still hope of a win. Nimrod
did well and quickly grabbed the first 2
points. Next, it was my turn, but after thinking
that 2 x 6 was 48, I rushed too quickly
with an educated guess. It was wrong, but
luckily Westminster failed to capitalise.
The next two questions were not answered
by either school, so with the scores at Westminster
49 City 45, and 8 points to play for,
both sides were very tense. Nimrod once
again got his two points, and this time, determined
to make up for my initial mistake,
I got my question. This left the scores at
Westminster 49 City 49! Everyone on our
team and probably Westminster’s team
were trembling with both hope and fear!
It was left to the 6th formers to decide our
fate. But it was all over too quickly as Westminster
took the 4 points with a total thinking
time of less than 10 seconds. The final
score was Westminster 53 City 49.
Though we lost, there were only positives
to draw from this match against last year’s
winners. We received our best point total in
3 years, but Westminster was better and it
must have been one of the highest scoring
matches ever throughout the competition
and no other team could be so happy with a
loss. It was so exciting that Mr Blake left his
inter-school chess competition against St.
Pauls’ to watch us and support. Well done
to Nimrod for getting all of his individual
questions right, well done to Alex Rigby for
staying calm until the end and for bringing
in a large score, and to Jonathan Berger for
bringing in an equally large score.
“And Then They
Came For Me”
Parents might be interested in purchasing
tickets for ‘And Then They Came For Me’ -
see advertisement on page 8 of this week’s
Citizen.
The play was performed to CLS audiences
in 2008 and 2009. The Third Form will be
watching it on Tuesday 19 October in the
Winterflood Theatre. The performance
will be followed by a question and answer
session with Eva Schloss, who survived
Auschwitz-Birkenau.