Report from the Logical Olympiad Finals 2015

Zuzana Kořínková

On 30 November 2015, the premises of the Ball Games Room of Prague Castle were witness to the 8th Logical Olympiad Finals. A total of 190 competitors in 3 categories competed for the victories.

30.11.2015
Ball Games Room of Prague Castle

Just like in previous years, the competition consisted of numerous tasks of different types. “All tasks are designed to exercise independent logical thinking, rather than obtained knowledge” says the Chairman of Mensa CR, Petr Mazal. “Apart from logic, other attributes, such as memory, visualisation capabilities, and creativity were essential to find solutions.” The attractiveness and variability of the tasks is an important feature – this year, the competitors had to imagine pouring water from one vessel into another, create words from letters flying across the monitor, search for a solution on how two mothers and two daughters can share three cakes without any of them coming off badly, or guess what a “flower + man-shape” means if “tree – puppet = sign”. “I liked the fact that the tasks were unorthodox, and often surprising. Many of these were trick questions, but that only makes them more interesting” admitted Jana, one of the competitors. Ondra, another participant, was also happy with the tasks: “I like these tasks just because I cannot solve some of them. It is a nice change when I compare them to Maths lessons.”

Competitors had to deal, besides traditional paper tests, with other tools as well, for example, with voting devices. “We strive to utilize technologies to their maximum, and therefore make the tasks more diverse, both in the content and formal way,” explains Petr Mazal.

“The Logical Olympiad is growing in popularity, the number of registered participants increases every year. This year, a record-breaking 58,265 pupils from 2,909 schools took part – which means participation of more than 50% of schools in the Czech Republic. It is probably the single largest-scale Mensa event worldwide,” says Petr Mazal, and continues: “We would not be able to organize the Logical Olympiad without the immense amount of work carried out by volunteers, and without the generous support of our sponsors, the most important being The Kellner Family Foundation and Open Gate Primary and Grammar School. All of them deserve a big thank you for making this event possible.” 

Zuzana Kořínková

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