From October to December 2022, the Integral Ritangle maths competition brought together over 1,000 teams of A-level maths students from around the world to compete in solving a range of challenging mathematical problems. As a participant, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand the fierce competition and was inspired to learn more about the winning team.
After months of intense problem solving, a team of year 12 students from the Liverpool Blue Coat School emerged victorious. Skilfully captained by Fred Lang, an accomplished chess player and nationally ranked speedcuber, the core team consisted of Fred, Xi Nan Shu, James Wong, and David Li. Their success was a result of their exceptional coordination, communication, determination, and mathematical prowess.
The first stage of the competition, consisting of a set of questions released weekly, proved to be easy for the team. According to David, the team “didn’t really have much trouble” tackling the initial questions, utilising a range of tools like desmos and programming to “brute force” their way through problems where a solution wasn’t immediately obvious.
At 4pm on December 6th 2022, the final stages of the competition released, and participants scrambled to solve them as quickly as possible. The Liverpool Blue Coat School team convened on call, and immediately set to work on the problems. They divided the tasks between themselves and in just under an hour, all stage 2 problems were solved. Making use of patterns they had pre-emptively identified in their answers, the team was able to apply these solutions to solve a jigsaw, and successfully unlock the final stage- the most challenging yet.
The question, spanning over 500 words, challenged participants to determine the quickest path for a runner to visit all the summits of a mystical island’s ephemeral mountains. The team quickly recognised this as a variant of a famous computer science problem – the travelling salesman, and after calculating the necessary components, implemented a sophisticated technique known as “simulated annealing” to finally calculate the optimal solution, beating the second fastest team by only 3 and a half hours.
When asked for tips for future competitors, Fred advised participants to “be prepared” and learn to code, while Xi Nan stressed the importance of teamwork. I would also advise that you carefully read the final question to avoid misinterpreting it like I did.
You can check out Fred’s youtube channel here where he primarily makes cubing videos including this stunning stop motion animation of tetris on a 10×10 cube. At David’s request, I must also add that Fred does not have a favourite colour.
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