There is a room in aitutors.me called The Maths Challenge. It holds twenty-four UKMT past papers, a clock, and a filing system that sorts every wrong answer by the mistake behind it rather than the paper it came from. This is a tour of what is in there and what each part is for. If your child is entered for the Junior or Intermediate Maths Challenge through school, this is where the practice happens.

Where it is

The room is at /study/jmc, and its breadcrumb reads ‹ Exams — because that is where you come from. Your child reaches it from their Exams room at /study/exam, either by tapping the big green Practise past papers tile on a JMC or IMC exam card, or from the standing Practice rooms entry.

It is gated on a Maths seat. If Maths is not one of the subjects on your account, the door says so plainly:

The Maths Challenge room needs a Maths seat. Ask your parent to add Maths at home, and this door opens.

One thing that is deliberately not a way in: the flashcards room at /study/cards does not link here. It used to. The link was removed so that flashcards does one job.

The switch: Junior or Intermediate

At the top sits a two-way switch, with a note under it that reads exactly:

Junior: Year 8 & below · Intermediate: Year 9–11

The default follows your child's school year, so most families never touch it. If your child does make an explicit choice, it is remembered. Both competitions run to the same shape — 25 questions · 60 minutes · no calculator — and each has twelve past papers loaded, covering 2015 to 2026.

If you are not sure which one applies, Junior or Intermediate: which one walks through it.

The four things you can do

Below the switch, the room offers four doors.

Door What it is
A full paper A grid of year tiles. Unsat tiles read "60 min"; a sat one shows a tick and the mark
A sprint "Six questions, twelve minutes, one clock"
Type your answers For a paper your child sat on paper at school
Things to fix The clinic — every wrong answer, grouped by the mistake

A full paper, under the clock

The closest thing to the real morning: twenty-five questions, sixty minutes, one clock that does not pause. Everything is saved as your child goes, there is an All questions grid, and a five-minute call. Sitting a full past paper under the clock covers it in detail.

A twelve-minute sprint

Six questions, twelve minutes, one clock, no calculator. It is sealed once started, which is the point of it — a short honest measure on a school night rather than an hour that never gets booked. See the twelve-minute sprint.

Sat one at school? Type your answers

Plenty of children sit the paper properly, at school, on paper — and then the marked script comes home and nothing happens to it. This door fixes that:

Sat a paper at school? Put your 25 letters in and every wrong one goes to the clinic with its name. Leave a blank blank.

Pick the paper, type twenty-five letters, tap Mark it. One entry per paper. More in type in a paper your child sat at school.

Things to fix — the clinic

This is the room's centre of gravity, and its subtitle says why:

Not by paper. By what keeps going wrong.

Every wrong answer is filed under a named mistake, with a count beside it — ×4, say. The door shows how many are waiting ("3 things to fix", sub "Grouped by the mistake"), and when there are none it reads: "Nothing yet — every wrong answer lands here with its name."

From a named mistake your child can practise it directly with a re-trap — a different question that sets the same trap — or take it to Professor Pi, or open the card that treats it. The whole idea is laid out in practice organised by the mistake.

We are also honest about the limits of our own filing. The product itself says: "Which mistake an option points to is our reading, not UKMT's."

And one more shelf: cards for this

At the bottom, Cards for this — "{JMC|IMC} toolkit and past years", with the sub "Spaced practice for the ideas these papers keep asking". It links into the flashcard Atlas, filtered to that competition family. See flashcards and the Maths Challenge.

What the room will never tell you

No readiness score. No percentile. No chance of passing. No predicted grade. No comparison against other children — none exists in the product. And no certificate prediction: where a paper has no published grade boundaries, the mark bar simply draws no tick row rather than guessing one. Why we don't tell you it was a Gold explains the reasoning.

FAQ

Where is the Maths Challenge room and how does my child get in?

It lives at /study/jmc and is reached from your child's Exams room — either the green "Practise past papers" tile on a JMC or IMC exam card, or the standing "Practice rooms" entry. It needs a Maths seat: without one the door shows "The Maths Challenge room needs a Maths seat. Ask your parent to add Maths at home, and this door opens."

How many past papers are in there?

Twelve for the Junior Maths Challenge and twelve for the Intermediate, spanning 2015 to 2026. Both competitions run to the same format — 25 questions, 60 minutes, no calculator.

Does it tell us whether my child would have got a Gold?

No, and it never will. Twenty-three of the twenty-four loaded papers carry no grade boundaries at all, and where boundaries are absent the mark bar draws no tick row — not a greyed one, not an approximated one. There is no readiness score, no percentile and no predicted certificate anywhere in the room.

Duke Harewood built aitutors.me for his own KS3-aged daughter. The Maths Challenge room started because a marked script came home from school and there was nowhere sensible to put it. Updated 10 September 2026.