In May, six pupils and three volunteers travelled to Northern Greece, where the UK participated as a guest team at the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad. For this event, UKMT sends pupils who are relatively inexperienced at international competitions – for three of the team members it was their first time representing their country.

Particular congratulations to Yuvan Raja from RGS Guildford who solved all four problems, receiving 40/40, the UK’s first ‘perfect score’ at an international competition since 2018! The UK team received three gold medals and two bronzes, and came 4th out of 25 participating teams, our strongest result to date at this competition.

Beyond the exams, the team enjoyed meeting other highly-motivated pupils from South-Eastern Europe and beyond, and enjoying local food and culture, including a tour of the famous White Tower of Thessaloniki.

We were also pleased that two of the four problems chosen for the paper were submitted by UKMT volunteers. A problem about transformations of domino tilings by Velian Velikov and Sean Morrell was very popular with the UK team, while a geometry problem involving the Miquel point of a complete quadrilateral, written by William Steinberg, was found more challenging!