There was a certain buzz in the air as the various house mathematicians entered the Hall.

After three days of buildup, preparation and panicking, the day of the Inter-house Maths Olympiad had finally arrived. This event has been long anticipated by many, including myself, the so-called captain of the Seladang Maths Olympiad team. One could sense the competitive spirit that’s always displayed at all inter-house events. Evidently the common hunger between all houses is for the House Cup and this exalted event is to be the penultimate event for all houses in the running for the First House Cup.

Once all technical issues were dealt with, students began filling the Hall seats and there was, naturally, cheering. The shouts of encouraging words and chants, wondering who rocks houses, and claims of winning races added to the anxiety the various house representatives were feeling. The five people (one from each level), of each house had the pressure of bringing the Maths Olympiad victory home with them, for the good of their houses.

The war began.

The first questions were very strange. Warm up questions, they were called, and they were only for the audience. These questions made me worry, but I’m sure I wasn’t only speaking for myself. Many of the questions could not be answered by anyone, but for the classic ‘nerd joke:’

“Why is 6 afraid of 7?”
“Because 7 8 9.” (seven ate nine)

Then the second, more serious round began, much to my relief. Questions were directed at all the participants in an interesting manner, allowing for much audience participation, which I’m sure was wonderful for them. Many of the questions did not require supreme mathematics knowledge, such as knowing the value of pi to a hundred decimal places or the 13th root of 77.5326, but required things such as ‘critical thinking’ and ‘logic,’ allowing members from every year, at any level, to have a chance at solving any of the questions.

Once about eight rounds of these individual level questions had finished, most of the houses were quite on par with each other, with the Greens somewhere in the upper region of the top four placings to my relief.

Round three then started. The four teams were gathered around their tables, and then were given about four maths questions to complete. The point bonus for these rounds was massive. A whole 50 points for answering correctly, but a 20-point penalty for an incorrect answer. A couple of houses did well and managed to answer at least one question. Seladang failed epically in that sense, and did not even attempt a question. Feeling our grip on the Maths Olympiad trophy fade away, we hoped that we could perform well in the Mystery Team Questions that would mark the last event before the Advanced Kakuro.

The Mystery Question was in fact not directly maths related, but still fell within the logic-using category. It was in fact a Chinese puzzle, called ‘Tangram,’ or ‘Chi-Chiao.’ This involved arranging the differently sized geometric objects, consisting of a square shape, a few different triangles, and a rhombus, to form certain shapes, such as a house, a swan, a helicopter or a mountain range in the first round of this, or the shapes of a letter M, A, T, and H.

Each shape was worth 20 points, and Seladang performed the best in this round, with a whole two shapes formed, out of eight. Measly as it seems, it was sufficient to maintain a lead, and after this round, the standings were announced and it was Seladang that ended up being in the lead!

The last round then began. We had about 20 minutes to complete an Advanced Kakuro puzzle and the audience had to complete an Advanced Sudoku puzzle. The Advanced Kakuro turned out to be a ‘Dikuro,’ which none of us had even seen before. The Advanced Sudoku was some sort of ‘Squares-with-dots-between-them-add-up-to-Five’ Sudoku also turned out to be very tough, according to members of the audience. The first team to finish anything would gain the lead, considering solving the Sudoku would have provided the math squad a massive 250 points, and solving the Kakuro would provide 150 points.

However, in a mildly anti-climatic way, no one managed to complete any of the last round puzzles, resulting in masses of joy for the Seladang members. An extra lump of joy for Seladang was the individual results for the event. In third place was Teoh Jun Vinh of Helang, with 42 points, in second place was Justin Koh of Harimau, with 47 points, and in first place was Jack Jacobs (yay!) of Seladang, with 61 points.

Overall, in fourth place was Helang, in third was Harimau, second was Beruang and the winners were Seladang.

Finally, the event was very impressive and interesting, not to mention reached a similar level of fun-ness through audience participation as the Inter-House Quiz managed. The format this year was greatly superior to that of the previous years and kept the audience on their toes, and more importantly, involved.