Great minds think alike as Perse pupils qualify for Logic Olympiad
Three Perse students will be deep in thought this summer after qualifying for the International Logic Olympiad (ILO).
Neelkantha (Upper Sixth), Hercules (Lower Sixth) and Ryan (Year 11) will get their heads together with Texas-based team member Arav in the competition at Stanford University in July.
As a group, they made it through three online rounds of fiendish puzzles and questions testing their reasoning skills to become one of the 50 teams taking part in the ILO final.
For Neelkantha, it will be his second experience of the ILO final, having been part of a team in what was an online event for the inaugural edition of the competition last year, and collecting a Gold Scholar prize for being among the top 5% of entrants.
He said: “What I’m really happy about is I met other people who read the article about my participation last year and wanted to take part because I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.”
Hercules and Ryan also entered the competition last year, and the former decided to put a team together, having been inspired by an online summer camp run by the ILO organisers.
“The summer camp is where I met our other team member and it was a great experience that went beyond the ILO syllabus, so I think that’s given our team a bit of an advantage and it’s been a lot of fun so far,” said Hercules, who is planning to launch a Perse Logic Club to encourage more Upper pupils into taking part in the competition.
Problem-solving exercises during the qualifying rounds ranged from puzzles such as sudokus to using logic to determine whether statements can be proven true or false.
Ryan said: “I think we work well together as a team because we all have different strengths. We’ve also had a strategy about how we do things and then come together to compare, but even when we don’t know something, we try to break it down logically and sometimes that has meant last-minute changes to get the correct answer.”
Neelkantha added: “I’m grateful to Hercules for convincing me to join the team. I was unsure whether I should or not because of A levels, but it’s a breath of fresh air thinking about things in a new light.”
As for the ILO final, they are all relishing the chance to visit Stanford, where they will also be given a campus tour, and pit their wits against young people from across the world with a similar mindset.
Hercules said: “It will be easier to collaborate as a team in-person and something that separates this from other competitions is that it’s more about thinking than content.
“For me personally, I’ve never been to the US, but I’m in the process of looking at going to a US university and Stanford is one of the places I’m considering, so I’m really looking forward to it.”