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The questions covered a wide range of topics: Sum and Difference problems, Arithmetic Progressions, Series Summation, Binary applications, Divisors and Multiples, Averages, and more.
The second round didn't differ much from the first in terms of curriculum; they simply swapped in a new question bank. Consequently, during the initial rotation of questions, both Medford High and Petersburg High found the difficulty level manageable.
It felt like the organizers were intentionally giving the teams a warm-up period.
With the first few members of both teams answering at lightning speed, it wasn't long before it was Mike's turn.
"5498, 27679, 948, 3769, 4559..."
The elderly professor in charge of the questions rattled off eight sets of unordered numbers, then asked, "Please calculate the sum and the average of this set."
Averages...
Mike lucked out. Summation and averages were considered the simplest type of questions, even by the standards of the first round. You only needed basic addition and division to get the answer.
However, even faced with such a softball question, Mike didn't forget his mission: to confuse the opposition.
He put on a show of deep concentration, grabbing the scratch paper and mechanical pencil provided by the organizers. He looked back and forth between the numbers on the big screen and his paper, starting his manual calculations.
It took him over ten seconds before a smile finally cracked his face, and he read out the correct answer loud and clear.
With his Level 4 [Acting] skill, Mike understood that less is more.
Anyone selected for the Math Olympiad team couldn't be an idiot. So, the persona he was crafting was that of a "regular" high school student—someone with a bit of talent, but nothing extraordinary.
Of course, this level of acting wouldn't fool anyone who actually knew him. But for strangers with ulterior motives? It was incredibly deceptive.
---
Just as Mike had planned, Carter, who had been scrutinizing the Medford team from the audience, frowned slightly after seeing the performance on stage.
He turned to his Marymount teammates and said, "If I remember correctly, that guy, Mike, is an eleventh grader on the Medford team, right?"
"Yeah. He's so handsome... too bad this is a math competition," remarked the only female member of the Marymount Math Olympiad team with a strange expression.
Her name was Caroline. She was an eleventh grader at Marymount and the sole girl on their roster.
Since there are often biological differences in how males and females process logical and spatial thinking—skills heavily relied upon in higher-level mathematics—Caroline was often considered the "weakest link" in the Marymount lineup.
After watching Mike's lackluster performance, she didn't say it out loud, but she felt a wave of relief and even a touch of disdain. In her mind, she had already decided that Mike was below her level.
Knowing there is someone at the bottom of the totem pole always makes people feel more secure. It's a classic psychological defense mechanism: the more insecure someone is about a specific trait, the more they fixate on it in others.
While this hierarchy of contempt can make people complacent, it can also give them a massive confidence boost. If Caroline could harness that confidence, it might actually work in her favor.
Meanwhile, Carter, who was hunting for Medford's weak spot, had originally planned to focus on Katie. But Mike's first round gave the Marymount captain a huge "surprise."
Having mentally tagged Mike, Carter shifted his focus entirely to him. It was clear Carter was already strategizing for the "Sudden Death" rounds, marking Mike as the target to exploit.
---
In the following rounds, Mike didn't disappoint.
As the difficulty ramped up, the time Mike took to derive the correct answers grew longer, and the expression on his face grew heavier.
Finally, he hit a snag on a logical "Newton's Cow" problem.
> If a pasture can sustain 10 cows for 20 days, or 15 cows for 10 days, how many days can it sustain 25 cows? (Assuming the grass grows at a constant rate).
These "Cattle Grazing" problems usually ask for one of two things: Time or Number of Heads. This one was asking for Time.
As the clock ticked down, Mike gripped his mechanical pencil, looking visibly lost.
Thanks to his setup in the previous rounds, his current struggle made it easy for everyone to assume he had no idea how to tackle the problem.
Beside him in the answering zone, his teammates were sweating bullets for him—except for Captain Kevin, who looked thoughtful.
Of course, the person most stressed by Mike's terrible performance was Ms. Sharon, the teacher who had invited him to the team.
"Don't be nervous... relax, it's not that hard..." Ms. Sharon sat in the audience, fists clenched, whispering encouragement. She was starting to doubt if Mike's previous genius-level display in math class had been real.
Ultimately, she chose to believe he was just choking under the pressure.
In contrast to the anxious teacher, Young Sheldon sat nearby, looking perfectly calm.
Although he didn't know why Mike was doing this, he firmly believed this competition posed zero challenge to him. After all, Sheldon had solved this relatively difficult "Newton's Cow" problem in his head in one second. By that logic, it shouldn't take Mike more than a second either.
Back on the Marymount side, seeing Mike's confusion made Carter wonder if he had made a mistake by considering Medford a threat at all. Based on Mike's current showing, the Medford Math Olympiad team might not even make it to the finals.
---
Regardless of what everyone else was thinking, Mike waited until twenty seconds had passed before he slapped on a look of sudden realization and started calculating.
Finally, with the thirty-second timer almost out, Mike shouted the correct answer to this medium-difficulty problem.
The audience, having ridden this emotional rollercoaster, let out a collective sigh of relief.
Mike's "barely scraping by" act actually gave some confidence to their opponents, Petersburg High. However, their joy was short-lived. An eleventh-grade member of the Petersburg team got stumped by a medium-difficulty Pigeonhole Principle question.
His reaction was almost identical to Mike's earlier struggle. Unfortunately for him, there was no last-minute stroke of genius. The timer hit zero, and he failed to provide an answer.
Because of that single mistake, Petersburg High lost their chance to advance.
"Congratulations to Medford High for securing a spot in the semi-finals!"
The elderly professor hosting the event announced the results as the second match concluded. After two more matches, the final four teams—including Marymount and Medford—were locked in for the afternoon semi-finals.
---
During the lunch break.
"Mike, what was going on back there? Why did you do that?" Ms. Sharon asked, too anxious to even eat her lunch in the event hall's cafeteria.
After cooling down, she had sensed that there was something deliberate about Mike's odd behavior. She just couldn't put her finger on what it was.
"Yeah, Mike, that wasn't your real level at all..." Katie added, refusing to believe Mike would actually be stumped by those problems.
Seeing their inquisitive looks, Mike glanced at Captain Kevin, who had come up with the plan. "You explain it to them."
"No problem." Kevin, always the energetic one, took on the task of breaking down the strategy.
Truth be told, while Kevin had suggested playing the rookie, he was genuinely shocked by how perfectly Mike had executed the role. If he hadn't been in on the secret, he would have been fooled by Mike's Oscar-worthy performance too.
Once Kevin explained that Mike was intentionally sandbagging to lower the enemy's guard, Katie and the others looked enlightened.
That makes sense.
Although Mike hadn't been on the team long, his insane math skills had already made him the unspoken backbone of the group.
"The difficulty is going to spike this afternoon. I hope you all focus on answering the questions properly..." Ms. Sharon said. She didn't entirely approve of these risky, unconventional tactics in an academic competition.
However, she didn't scold Mike or Kevin. Instead, she used the rest of the lunch break to share her experience and tips for high-level competition.