MEM has been running Challenge and Senior Challenge take-home competitions in February half term since the late 1970s. Together, these competitions attract about 2,000 entries annually, with Challenge aimed at Years 7 and 8, and Senior Challenge aimed at Years 9 and 10.

Go directly to the 2024 Challenge Papers »

A third competition, Open Challenge for students aged 18 and under, is organised by Liverpool Mathematical Society (LivMS). Open Challenge details can be found here Open Challenge

Copies of all three competitions are sent in January to local high schools and anyone else who has registered an interest. The deadline for returning entries is on the front of the particular question sheet and is usually early March. Challenge 2024 and Senior Challenge 2024 can be downloaded and printed from these webpages. Teachers are also asked to download and print the Mark Sheets, which should, if possible, be completed with the pupils’ names and placed in the envelope containing the competition entries.

Please assist those doing the marking by entering the pupils’ names on the Mark Sheets in alphabetical order, and by submitting the entries in the same order. Please also submit Challenge and Senior Challenge entries in separate envelopes. Thank you.

It would help the MEM marking team to save a lot of time if schools were able to collect their pupils’ entries and post them together to the return address, along with the mark sheets.

All entries must clearly show the pupil’s name, school name and school postcode. If submitting entries individually, a maths teacher’s contact name and maths teacher’s email address would also be useful.

Both competitions consist of about 8 questions usually centred around a particular theme, with illustrations provided by Theo Chaddock and Peter Ackerley.
The theme for 2024 is Constellations.
The best entrants will be invited, along with family or friends, to prize-giving evenings at the University of Liverpool in May 2024.

Financial support for Senior Challenge is kindly provided by Mercer.

Challenge & Senior Challenge 2024 Competitions and Mark Sheets

. . . to download, click the links below

Last year a couple of schools had difficulty downloading the Challenge Questions. If you experience any problems this year, please contact us and we will send the question papers to you by a different route!