Welcome to The 4th Annual Cowconuts Shengmeng Math Contest, organized by the Cowconuts Math Club Officers! The 4th Annual Shengmeng Math Contest will take place virtually on September 5th from 9 am PST to 2:30 pm PST and will incorporate two rounds, the individual round and the guts round. Every contestant must individually solve problems during the individual round, while a group of up to four contestants collaboratively work on the problems during the guts round. If your team has less than 4 members, we will try our best to fill in the spots on your team with other participants. The difficulty of both rounds will range from AMC8 all the way to late AMC10/AMC12.

CONTEST FORMAT & LOGISTICS

The individual round consists of 30 short-answer problems, and all answers will be integers. Contestants will be given 75 minutes to solve these problems. At the end, there will be a one minute grace period to submit responses on the google form.

The guts round consists of 36 short-answer problems with all answers as integers. Teams of contestants will have 90 minutes to try and solve as many problems as they can. The guts round will be split into 9 sets, with each set containing four problems. Only when the team finishes submitting their answers for a set or chooses to skip the set can they view the next set’s questions. All submissions are final (you cannot move back and forth between sets).

There will be an additional tiebreaker round to break ties between those in the top 10 per division. Those participating must do 3 questions in 5 minutes as fast as possible. If multiple people get the same amount of questions correct, the contestant with the faster submission time will be the winner.

More details about logistics can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14BJMZkmTvs88NkdyDoAJHwHj9dtCzDHlWltFIiGAZZI/edit?usp=sharing

Results will be split into three categories: elementary (grades 6 and below), middle (grades 7 and 8), and high school levels (grades 9 to 12). Awards will be given to the top 10 contestants in each category (i.e. 10 high schoolers, 10 middle schoolers, and 10 elementary schoolers), as well as the top 10 contestants overall. Additionally, the top three teams in each division and overall will receive an award. The division of a team is equivalent to the division of the oldest member.

The competition will be hosted on zoom. The zoom link will be given a few days prior to the contest to those who signed up via email. Please sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/cowconutsignup

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Note: All times are in PST.

8:30am – 9:00am: Check-In
9:00am – 9:15am: Opening Ceremony
9:15am – 10:45am: Individual Round
11:00am – 12:45pm: Guts Round
12:45pm – 1:15pm: Lunch
1:15pm – 1:45pm: Tiebreakers
2:15pm – 2:30pm: Award Ceremony
6:00pm – 7:00pm: Professor Po-Shen Loh’s Problem Review Session

SPONSOR: