24 Hours of Le Maths
A maths-based endurance event for charity.
24 Hours of Le Maths is Durham’s spin-off of Le Mans, but there was no driving involved… only deriving!
Each year, the university’s maths department hosts a 24-hour maths endurance competition. It’s an exciting opportunity for students to show off not how good they are at maths, but instead how long they may last in competition. Teams of up to four compete by answering as many maths questions correctly as is physically possible in 24 hours. I had the delight of spearheading this year’s event with Cassia Pearce.
The event has run five times since 2021 and has partnered with Point North for the latter three. Point North are a community foundation that raise funds to be distributed to voluntary organisations and charities in and around County Durham. Since its founding in 1995, Point North has distributed over £70.8 mn in funding to community projects tackling poverty and creating opportunity. £5.7 mn was granted in the 24/25 year alone, reaching almost one million people through support for vital services including food banks, youth activities and employment support.
As a collective, all participants fundraised a total of £1,398.90 in 2026. Excellent work, everyone!
You can download the question paper from the most recent event for free, but please do give credit where credit is due.
You can follow the archived journey on our Instagram page.
Prizes
This year we decided to hand out prizes for more silly things than just first, second and third place.
The degree of Dedication to Sleep Deprivation was awarded to:
- **Dan Yabsley** with First Class Honours
- **The Three Dimensions** with Second Class (Division One) Honours
- **$\mathrm{i}8\Sigma\pi$** with Second Class (Division Two) Honours
The *Uptown Funke** award was presented to Heisenbob Gongerpants for their valuable contributions towards raising money for Point North, and in doing so have enriched the lives of those in need.
The Wojciech Kowalczyk award was presented to Kazuki Bekku for achieving the highest score while being a team of one person, scoring 2262 points (only 323 behind first place!).
The Baby on Board award was given to Sleeping Mathematicians for their outstanding performance as a team purely made up of first-year university students.
Finally, the LeMathsterChef award for the best MCS chef was granted to Gauss of Lords, who made some delicious meals during the event, at the event.
Question writing
Most of the time spent organising this project was by far the question writing. Cassia and I handpicked a team of question writers who meticulously crafted a paper encompassing questions from all areas of maths: basic arithmetic to university calculus, GCSE questions to Putnam-level questions. I would like to say a huge thank you to the team:
James Bramley - Andreo Chimal - Yuvraj Dhunna - Harry Graham - Finn Hogan - Freya Jury - Louie Leventhall - Luci Mullen - Guy Parker - Lewis Tadman - Josh Rowbotham
This year also featured special lecturer questions, which were difficult questions released once per hour and worth the most marks. Special thanks are given to:
Frank Coolen - Ric Crossman - Amit Einav - Dan Evans - Anna Felikson - Jens Funke - Hossein Kafiabad - Nicholas Georgiou - Sarah Heaps - James Liley - Jack Shotton - Paul Sutcliffe - Pavel Tumarkin - Clare Wallace.
Think you’ve got what it takes to be a question writer? Contact me and we’ll chat!
In the media
I chatted to the original team of organisers before I took over the project in this podcast episode. It is my favourite podcast episode I have recorded to date!
