Montgomery Catholic Places 1st at AMP’d Puzzle Challenge

The AMP’d Math Puzzle Challenge was Saturday, January 24, 2015 at Auburn University. Montgomery Catholic competed at the Varsity (11th-12th grade) and Junior Varsity (9th-10th grade) levels. The event poses 12 math/logic puzzles for teams of 7 to solve over a period of about 5 hours.

Both teams did well and the students enjoyed solving the puzzles. Some were simple and straight-forward, (such as writing a crossword with the spelling for the numbers one through twenty), others were hard (such as navigating a complete circuit with a complex moving scheme or aligning sets of colored squares to meet a complex symmetry condition), and some were harder than they might have been (such as counting the number of ways to make 37 cents or renumbering a pair of dice to keep the same probability of rolling totals 2 to 12). 

  

The Montgomery Catholic Junior Varsity team did exceptionally well and took first place among junior varsity teams. The team actually scored 3rd overall beating all but two of the varsity teams and  were one of only a few teams to solve all 12 puzzles. Special recognition to Henry Petters and Lisa Hong for being among the few who solved the two most difficult puzzles. The Montgomery Catholic Varsity team had tough competition and worked hard to bring home 5th place. Dr. Profio said of the teams “Both teams worked hard. The teamwork was impressive. I hope the students learned something about patience, persistence, and effective collaboration.”