I went to Northern CA MATHCOUNTS last Saturday and MCrawford went to the Southern CA contest. The people running the Northern CA went out of their way to promote AoPS, which was very nice. I finally was able to meet several AoPSers I've wokred with recently, such as LynelleYe and uberl33tmage (who made the state team, along with 2 of the Miller kids below). I also saw the Miller students I've worked with in the past (bob123, defiance, PiggyPi, Scrambled, etc), and met the Redwood team and a few other parents/students I've corresponded with recently. AoPS students took the top 4 slots in Northern CA, and San Diego students came in 2nd and 3rd in Southern CA. Miller's team won again. Not that we play favorites at AoPS, but we do work with the Miller math enrichment group roughly once a week, so we were happy to see them continue their streak of victories.

I gave a not-so-brief 'talk' that was basically a couple games. I called students up to the stage to play each other until one student beat three students in a row. Then they had to play me. Defiance and Scrambled were the successful students.

Here are the games:

There are 28 sticks in a row. Players take turns taking 1, 2, 3, or 4 sticks - whoever forces the other to take the last stick wins.

A row of 15 0's is given:

000000000000000

Players take turns X'ing out 0's until one player successfully forms 3 X's in a row (both players have the same X's).