Legend has it, that way back in 1983 in UCC, a dispute arose as to who were the best mathematical students in College. Elec. Eng. students claimed that because of the high points requirements they were obviously the best, but the honours maths students in Science and Arts naturally wouldn't take this lying down and so a challenge went out. This lead to the organisation of an annual competitive examination open to all full time registered UCC students. No matter what they studied, as long as they didn't hold a PhD, they were eligible. It was dubbed the "Superbrain Competition" and from 1984 to 2007 the questions have been set and marked by Professor Des MacHale. From 2008 onwards the questions are set by a committee. The questions are based on topics covered in the honours Leaving Cert course, so if you've done this you should be able to at least (and in a lot of cases, at most) be able to make some attempt at the questions. Since 1990 the Superbrain has also been used to select the UCC team for the maths intervarsities, with the top four students currently forming the lucky team that get to take an even harder exam.

Do you want to practice for the next Superbrain? The best way forward is by going through some of the past papers. Links to all of them can be found in one of the context boxes to the right. The majority of papers are only available in html format. However I plan to convert all of these into pdf format if time allows. Happy practicing for now!!

Please note that these questions have been set by Prof. Des MacHale, and may not be published or reproduced in any form without his permission.