American TV series: Starting with exploiting young Sheldon

This can be seen as the organizers deliberately giving the teams time to warm up and prepare.

With the first few players from both sides answering questions at a rapid pace, it wasn't long before it was Mike's turn to answer.

“5498、27679、948、3769、4559……”

The professor in charge of asking questions recited eight sets of unordered numbers in a row, and then asked, "Please calculate the sum and average of these numbers."

average value……

Mike was lucky; problems involving summation and averages were among the simplest in the first round of questions.

With just basic addition and division, you can easily arrive at the answer.

However, even when faced with such a simple question, Mike did not forget that he also had the task of confusing his opponent.

With a serious expression, he took the calculation paper and mechanical pencil provided by the organizers and began his calculation process, comparing them with the original numbers displayed on the big screen.

A dozen seconds later, a smile appeared on his face, and he loudly gave the correct answer.

Mike, who possesses a Level 4 [Performance] skill, is well aware of the principle that too much of a good thing can be bad.

The person selected for the math olympiad team can't be an idiot, so the persona he's currently portraying is that of an "ordinary" high school student with some talent, but not much.

Of course, this level of performance is impossible to hide from acquaintances. But it can be very deceptive to those with ulterior motives and who are unfamiliar with the person.

Just as Mike had expected, Carter, who had been observing the Melford team members from the sidelines, frowned slightly after seeing the answers given on stage.

Then he said to the other members of the Marymont Academy team beside him, "If I remember correctly, the guy named Mike in Melford's team is an eleventh-year student, right?"

“Yes, he’s so handsome, it’s a pity this is an Olympiad math competition…” The only female member of the Marymont Olympiad math team said with a strange expression.

The girl's name is Caroline, an eleventh-year student at Marymont College, and the only female in the group.

Women naturally differ from men in logical and spatial thinking.

In higher-level mathematics, logical thinking and spatial imagination are often required.

Therefore, after considering all factors, Caroline can be considered the "weak link" in the Marymondo's math Olympiad team.

After watching Mike's performance, the girl didn't show it on her face, but she couldn't help but feel a sense of contempt.

Along with that, there was also a sense of smug satisfaction.

In short, she had already decided that Mike was inferior to her.

Knowing that someone is at the bottom always makes people feel more at ease without them even realizing it.

This situation is similar to how people are more concerned about something the more they are bad at it.

Of course, while this hierarchy of contempt can make people careless, it can also boost their self-confidence.

If Caroline can maintain this state, it might not be a bad thing for her.

On the other side, Carter, who was looking for weaknesses in the Melford Math Olympiad team, had originally intended to focus his attention on Katie, a female team member.

However, Mike's first round of answers gave the captain of the Marymond Math Olympiad team a big "surprise".

Having confirmed Mike's information, he then focused his attention on the other party.

Clearly, Carter is likely already considering his team's opponents in the upcoming "sudden death" matches.

In the following rounds of questions and answers, Mike certainly did not disappoint him.

As the questions became more difficult, it took Mike longer and longer to arrive at the correct answer, and his expression grew increasingly serious.

Finally, Mike was stumped by a logic problem involving "cows eating grass".

The same pasture covered with grass can feed 10 cows for 20 days or 15 cows for 10 days. How many days can it feed 25 cows?

The "cows grazing" problem mainly has two types: 1. Finding the time; 2. Finding the number of cows.

This question is about finding the time.

As the time allotted for the quiz passed, Mike, holding his mechanical pencil, looked somewhat bewildered.

Given the groundwork laid in the previous rounds of answering questions, his current performance easily leads one to believe that he has no idea how to approach this question.

Among Mike's teammates in the same question-and-answer area, apart from Captain Kevin who seemed lost in thought, Katie and the others couldn't help but wipe the sweat from their brows.

Of course, the person most excited to see Mike's terrible performance was Sharon, the teacher who invited him to the math Olympiad team.

"Don't be nervous... relax, this question isn't difficult..." Ms. Sharon sat in the audience, clenching her fists, and whispered encouragement to Mike.

She now has some doubts about whether Mike's outstanding performance in the math competition was real or not.

However, in the end, Ms. Sharon was more inclined to believe that Mike's poor performance was simply due to nervousness.

Compared to the nervous teacher Sharon, young Sheldon, who was sitting to the side, appeared very calm from the beginning.

Although he didn't know Mike's intentions, he firmly believed that the match would be no challenge for his opponent.

After all, Sheldon could answer the relatively difficult "cows eating grass" problem in a second.

Similarly, Mike should be able to answer this question in less than a second.

Meanwhile, at Marymount College, Carter, seeing Mike's bewildered expression, was already wondering if he had made a mistake in treating Melford High School as a rival.

Based on Mike's current performance, the Melford High School Math Olympiad team may not even make it to the finals.

……

Regardless of what others thought, Mike, in Melford's question-and-answer section on stage, waited a full twenty seconds before finally starting to calculate the answers with a look of realization.

Finally, with the thirty-second time limit almost up, Mike gave the correct answer to this moderately difficult math problem.

At the same time, many people who were paying attention to the answers breathed a sigh of relief, as if they had just ridden a roller coaster.

At the same time, Mike's barely passing performance boosted the confidence of the opposing team, Peterburg High School.

Before they could even celebrate, the eleventh-grade members of the St. Petersburg Math Olympiad team were stumped by a medium-difficulty "pigeonhole principle" problem.

This student's reaction was almost identical to Mike's. Unfortunately, however, even by the end of the question-and-answer session, this person hadn't managed to come up with an answer.

Therefore, St. Petersburg High School lost the opportunity to enter the second round of the competition due to a mistake on one question.

Congratulations to Melford High School for qualifying for the semifinals!

After the second match ended, the professor in charge of hosting the event immediately announced the results.

After two more matches, four teams, including Marymount College and Melford High School, secured their spots in the afternoon semifinals.

"Mike, what was going on before? Why did you do that?" During the lunch break, in the event organizer's cafeteria, Ms. Sharon, who was too busy to eat, asked the question that had been bothering her.

After a period of calm, she seemed to discern some other meaning in Mike's unusual behavior.

However, what exactly it is remains to be investigated.

“Yeah, Mike, that wasn’t your true level at all…” Katie didn’t believe that Mike would be stumped by an Olympiad math problem either.

Seeing the inquisitive looks on their faces, Mike glanced at Captain Kevin, who had made the suggestion, and said, "Why don't you explain it to them?"

“No problem.” The free-spirited Captain Kevin took on the task of explaining the plan to everyone.

To be honest, although he was the one who first suggested pretending to be a newbie, Mike's ability to portray the newbie so perfectly still surprised him greatly.

If he hadn't already known, he probably would have been fooled by Mike's superb performance.

Next, after he explained to everyone why Mike had performed so poorly in the previous game, Katie and the others immediately looked enlightened.

That's how it should be.

Although Mike didn't spend much time on the math olympiad team, his exceptional math olympiad skills made him a de facto "backbone" of the team.

"The afternoon's competition will be much more difficult, so I hope you will focus on answering the questions..." Although Ms. Sharon did not approve of the unconventional methods used in the math Olympiad.

However, she didn't say much about Mike and Kevin's actions. Instead, she took advantage of the lunch break to share a lot of her experience from math Olympiad competitions with the team members.

Chapter 211 The Match in Progress (Continued)

After a short break, it was 2 p.m. when the semi-finals of the math Olympiad competition began again.

Compared to the preliminary rounds in the morning, the math hall was much busier in the afternoon, with more spectators coming to watch the competition. These were all true math enthusiasts.

Furthermore, the three afternoon matches will determine this year's math Olympiad champion. Therefore, the prestige of the competition will be significantly increased.

As the number one seed, Marymount College was the first to appear in the afternoon's semi-final.

Once the semi-finals began, it became clear that, without considering individual factors, Marymont College's overall math Olympiad level was indeed higher than that of other colleges.

Even Caroline, the eleventh-grade girl, has a very solid and comprehensive knowledge of math olympiad.

As the difficulty of the questions increased in the round-robin format, Marymont College, with its solid knowledge base, easily defeated its opponents in the first round of the round-robin question-and-answer session, despite their opponents making repeated mistakes.

Congratulations to Marymount College for securing a spot in the finals!

The elderly professor in charge of hosting the competition announced the result in a slightly louder voice after the two teams had determined the winner.

Amidst the sparse applause from the audience, Carter, who had secured the first spot in the finals, smiled and led his team in waving to the crowd.

After a morning of observation and analysis, Carter concluded that no other school could threaten his college's chances of winning the championship.

So, with his confidence fully in control, he couldn't hide the happy expression on his face.

"Damn curly hair..." Captain Kevin, who already harbored a prejudice against Carter, felt nothing but disgust as he looked at Carter's radiant smile on stage.

"Alright, Kevin, it's your turn next." Teacher Sharon encouraged the team members who were about to go on stage: "Do your best, don't be nervous, you are no worse than anyone else."

"Understood, Ms. Sharon." Captain Kevin assured him with great determination, "We will defeat that wretched curly-haired guy in the finals."

Meanwhile, the senior professor in charge of hosting the match continued to advance the proceedings: "Now, let's welcome the teams from Melford High School and St. John's High School to the stage!"

As last year's third-place finisher, Shengyu High School should have a decent level of math competition skills. In the preliminary round this morning, they defeated their opponents by getting all the questions correct in the round-robin format.

After the Melford and Shengyu math Olympiad teams arrived at the answer area, the second semi-final of the afternoon officially began.

As the game progressed, Mike maintained his "ordinary" high school student persona.

Upon seeing his performance again and learning the reason behind it, Melford's teammates were no longer nervous; instead, they all kept serious expressions.

There was no way around it; now that they knew the riddle, watching Mike's "performance" just made them want to laugh. If they hadn't kept a straight face, they probably would have burst out laughing.

In this atmosphere, Mike repeatedly answered all the questions correctly in the first round of the question-and-answer session, "with narrow escapes".

The team members from Shengyu High School were also in good form, and they answered all the questions correctly by the end of the round of questions.

Therefore, both teams advanced to the second round of the buzzer-beater competition with perfect scores.

There are ten questions in total. The first college to answer six questions correctly wins.

"Beep...beep...beep..."

During the quiz round, each team has a buzzer button in front of them.

Mike, who has an exceptional physique, stopped pretending. In this segment, whenever the host finished reading a question, he would press the button at lightning speed.

They didn't give the opposing team any chance at all.

Of course, having secured the right to answer the question, he wouldn't actually answer it in order to maintain his persona, instead leaving the opportunity to his teammates.

With a highly motivated captain like Kevin, and the exceptionally talented Mike pretending to be a rookie, the Melford Math Olympiad team felt relaxed and performed exceptionally well.

Thus, in the second round of the quiz, Mike used his incredible speed to secure the right to answer the first six questions for his team.

With Captain Kevin as their backup, Melford High School defeated their opponents and advanced to the finals with overwhelming force.

Looking at the players from Shengyu High School on the other side, each of them had a helpless expression on their face.

It's fair to say that the second round of the Q&A session almost turned into a one-man show by Melford High School, with their rival, St. Yu High School, completely lacking any sense of participation.

Losing a brainpower-based competition due to slow reflexes is naturally very frustrating.

"Congratulations to Melford High School for reaching the finals," the senior professor presiding over the competition announced. "Let's take a short break, and then we'll begin the final battle for the championship!"

With only three matches in the afternoon, there is plenty of time. Therefore, there will be a ten-minute break between the semi-finals and the finals to allow the second team to advance to the finals to adjust their form.

……

Just before the break ended, in the Melford Q&A area on stage, Ms. Sharon patted each team member on the shoulder, her voice slightly excited: "Don't feel any pressure, you've done very well. I'm so proud of you..."

It's clear that being so close to the championship made even the math Olympiad instructor, Sharon, feel a bit nervous.

"Don't worry, teacher, we've already won," Kevin said firmly.

Seeing the puzzled looks on everyone's faces, he smiled and gestured, "Look at those ugly ducklings over there. We're way better looking than them!"

Those who can join the math olympiad team are often somewhat bookish.