another contest problem.

3 Dimensional Geometry and his other question.

I will look up the previous questions about contest problems in a minute. I was halfway through composing an answer, then I found http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/ . I wrote them a letter, as I could not immediately identify which of their problems was involved. I guess you see the problems as pdf's after registering or something.

I understand this is not an emergency for MSE. Nevertheless, I really hate this.

• I am strongly against questions from ongoing contests, but that does not seem to be the case here. Looking at the rules section of the competition it seems that the test is written in person, and we can even find solutions to some past questions on the site. There is no problem with asking past IMO or Olympiad questions, so what exactly is the problem here? – Eric Naslund Nov 22 '12 at 22:55
• @Eric, you and Will may have noticed that this user even posted one of the questions as an answer to the other question. Maybe the questions are OK, but the way of posting them leaves much to be desired. – Gerry Myerson Nov 22 '12 at 22:57
• @Eric, you made more progress on the Leeds site than I did. All I saw for sure is that the phrase Greedy Geoff did not show up on Google. Also Gerry's point, which I did notice. However, I will look at the link you give for their rules section, perhaps leave another comment after that. – Will Jagy Nov 22 '12 at 23:06
• @Eric, I saw the relevant section and i believe I take your point. So, as this will happen in future, I will investigate a little more thoroughly. I do not believe I have ever administered such a contest in any capacity, so it never occurred to me to look at the rules section. However, put very simply, the OP did not want anyone to know the source of the problem. – Will Jagy Nov 22 '12 at 23:19
• @Gerry, thanks. I suppose the strong feelings from me are simply that I was halfway through composing an answer on my home computer Latex before i ran one more check on the possible sources of the question. But I do get worked up about things. – Will Jagy Nov 22 '12 at 23:21
• @Eric, on the other hand, examination questions can be stolen, as an examination that is printed on actual paper is likely to be printed out days before it is needed. Well, with luck Leeds will write back and say it is from some specific practice booklet. – Will Jagy Nov 23 '12 at 0:34
• The question is also on this document (pdf) dated 2005. – Douglas S. Stones Nov 23 '12 at 0:46
• @DouglasS.Stones, thanks. How did you find this? – Will Jagy Nov 23 '12 at 2:39
• alright, anyway this guy: people.bath.ac.uk/masgcs – Will Jagy Nov 23 '12 at 2:50
• and problems in this sequence downloadable at people.bath.ac.uk/masgcs/xmas.html – Will Jagy Nov 23 '12 at 2:51
• I found it by Googling the whole text. – Douglas S. Stones Nov 23 '12 at 4:21

It isn't from any of the UKMT competitions. It's from a Christmas competition independently created by Geoff Smith (he also wrote most of the problems himself).

Also what is the problem, I really don't understand the point of this thread, this isn't even a formal competition which anyone sat, just a bunch of questions Geoff Smith decided to post every Christmas on his site. Also, the question is really old...

• How was I to know that? – Will Jagy Nov 23 '12 at 19:08

My guess is that this is a question used internally for training our squad rather than being an external competition question, and as such it shouldn’t really be being posted on other websites. Please could you clarify your query and I will forward it to the appropriate people?

Best Wishes

..........

• I cannot get it to show the Dear William. Anyway, this is the first guess of someone at UKMT, replying to my email. If people would identify the source of each posted question as part of the process of posting, life would be a bit easier. – Will Jagy Nov 23 '12 at 19:30
• This would probably have been better included as a > quote in your question. That would also have saved it from the salutation remover. – Ilmari Karonen Dec 22 '12 at 23:05