Maths Challenge Questions


Thinking about Maths challenges, I was interested to see these Irish competitions.

The Junior competition is for Irish first year students (ages 12-13). Questions and solutions from 2011 onwards are available on self-checking Google or Microsoft Forms; you can copy the forms and use them as your own. The competition consists of 15 multiple choice problem solving questions to be answered within a 40 minute period. 

For some more problems to try, have a look at Peter’s Problem, problem solving questions set at the level of Junior Cycle Ordinary level; in terms of the GCSE the nearest Irish award is the Junior Certificate. Problems and solutions are available for 2012 onwards. All the links take you diectly to a pdf document.

Peter’s Problem 2022 extract – Irish competition
Peter’s Problem – Solutions

With the UK Junior Maths Challenge (for ages 11 – 13) on Wednesday 26th April, it’s time for some final practice papers; the 2022 paper has been published on DrFrost Maths. Students can try this paper online and get feedback on the answers.

On the UKMT site use the Junior Maths Challenge archive to freely access the 2015 – 2022 papers, solutions and investigations are also available. The solutions and investigations give full solutions, there are also additional problems for further investigation.

These are great problems for any time and really get students thinking. The 2015 – 2021 papers can be accessed online or you can download a paper. For older students use the Intermediate or Senior Mathematical Challenge archives.


For further resources try:


Challenge Prompts

See also: Maths Challenge Prompts.

For further challenging problems see the post, Polya – Problem Solving which includes many recommendations.

Zeitz, P., 2007. The art and craft of problem solving. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, p.2

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