This year, more of our students took part in the Alan Turing Cryptography Competition than we’ve ever had in previous years.

This national event runs from January until April and asks teams of students to solve six increasingly difficult ciphers as they work through a story. This time, the story revolved around a murder at a remote genetics institute on the moors, with each cipher giving a clue to help find the culprit. Our students all put in a great deal of effort to crack the problems, which ranged from substitution ciphers to OS maps.

One of our teams, made up of Alex T., Christian L. and Yosef A.M., managed to solve all 6 ciphers, placing them in the top 30 teams out of over 1000 nationally (the third year in a row that they have done so!) This is their final year of participation in the competition and we congratulate them on this impressive track record.

Nevertheless, our keen Year 7 teams also performed admirably this year, with both of them cracking five out of the six problems. Moreover, one of the teams, consisting of Will S., Milly H. and Leonie F., was randomly selected to win a spot prize of an Amazon voucher for successfully solving one of the later chapters. They received their prizes along with the Year 11 students earlier this week.

So, in summary, another year to celebrate! We would like to thank all students who took part this year and hope that we will have even more budding cryptographers next year.

Well done to Alex, Christian, Yosef, Eren, Adam O, Milly, Leonie, Will, Tom, Jonty and Sam!

This academic year, four 7-11 students took part in the regional finals of the UKMT Team Maths Challenge held at the Maths Institute, where they competed against 27 other teams from around the South of England in a gruelling set of four rounds.

The day began with a short walk from school in the rain to the venue (where we encountered a picket line of university staff, who very kindly wished us luck). Once inside, we settled ourselves with some drinks and snacks and prepared to face the opposition. Here’s what happened in the words of the students themselves.

Joseph A, Year 9
“After we’d finished the practice questions (mainly successfully), we prepared ourselves for the group round. We had 10 questions over the course of 45 minutes. We spent our time with a few simple questions involving simultaneous equations and fractions. We were doing well until we spotted how much time we had left. We had to hurry on through the difficult few questions we had left and finally finished with seconds to spare! They told us our score before we started the crossnumber.”

Emmie B, Year 8
“Think of a crossword, except with numbers, each intertwined. so, you can’t figure out the question without working out another, and another one! To add more tension, you are split into two teams with half of the clues each. Concentration and teamwork are key. You can only speak to the other pair to ask them to do certain questions:
“Can you do 17 across?” “I can’t do that unless you do 5 down.” “I need 8 across for that.” “Only if you do 7 down.”
This would go on for a while and we would lose track of why we were doing 7 down. This was fun and creative but was also slightly irritating. I loved the way you could help each other, as each clue melds together very satisfyingly.”

Phoebe F, Year 9
“The third round was the shuttle round, where we split our team in half. There were four shuttles, each with four questions. Two of us had to work out the first one and write our answer on a sheet without communicating with the other two people. Then they would use that answer in their questions and pass it back to us, and so on. It was really tricky because if we got the first one wrong, it meant all of the other answers were wrong too, so we had to be really careful.”

Scotty J, Year 8

“For the fourth round, we split the team in two again, and we were in different parts of the room. We had to collect a question, answer it and then run across the room to get our answer checked. If we were right, we got other questions to pass on to the other pair, just like in a relay race. As we ran, our hearts pounded, as we tried to get through lots of questions in the available time.”

At the end of the day, we gathered with all of the other teams in the main lecture theatre to hear the results. Our team was very happy with our placing of 14th out of 28th overall, and it was fantastic for the members to get a small insight into what studying mathematics at university might be like.

This academic year, four intrepid Year 10 Mathematics students set off to compete in the Year 10 Maths Feast run by the Further Maths Support Programme.

After a starter interpreting diagrams and a serious main course of intense problem solving there was a “practical interlude” which involved designing beer mats and creating a die out of them to experiment with dice cycles.

The last round, the dessert, was a fast and furious Hexaquiz. We are delighted to report that Eren, Archie, Matt and Vasco did themselves and d’Overbroeck’s proud by winning the coveted Teamwork Prize.

They worked wonderfully well together for over three hours – no mean feat. Here they are with their Maths Feast badges!

Monday the 2nd of July saw the chance for some of our Year 10 Maths students to attend a day targeted at those thinking of studying Maths and possibly Further Maths at A-level.

The all-day event was held at the University of Oxford’s Mathematical Institute and consisted of a series of talks and activities that shared a glimpse of what our students could expect when studying at A-level, and why it was relevant to the real world.

The first session of the day discussed graph theory, and students were amazed at how this simple principle is used in deciding how gritting trucks move through the streets to grit our roads during the winter, or how it governs the routes that postal workers take to minimise distances travelled.
The final morning talk looked at the uses of complex and imaginary numbers, something covered in Further Maths and with plenty of real-world application. Our students remarked at just how amazing it was to see that complex numbers could be used in video games, enhancing movies, and CGI.

The afternoon sessions kicked off with a fascinating guest lecture on the centre of masses and balancing. Students from the different schools had a chance to volunteer and take part. The grand finale of the talk saw a student balanced upon only a small block due to an accurate calculation of their centre of mass.

To round off the day, students completed problem-solving tasks in the incredibly fast-paced and action-packed “Dragon Game”. Small teams of four competed to finish problems and extend their “Dragon”, having to race around the room with answers.

Overall the day was a fantastic success, and all who attended commented on how useful the day had been in helping them make informed decisions for their selection of A level subjects.