Compete

Preparation guide

How to prepare for Math Kangaroo

A friendly international puzzle contest that starts in grade 1.

Open to beginners · Grades K to 12

Competition details and how to enter Official website

Where the points actually are

Math Kangaroo problems are puzzles, not exercises. Preparation is mostly about seeing enough of them that the puzzle styles become familiar. Twenty past papers is more useful than any textbook.

Topic breakdown

01Visual and spatial puzzles
Folding and unfolding, cube nets, reflections and rotations, counting hidden blocks. These appear at every level and are rare in school maths.
02Logic grids and deduction
Who-sits-where puzzles, true and false statements, elimination reasoning.
03Patterns and sequences
Number and shape patterns, repeating cycles, simple recursion.
04Arithmetic and word problems
Multi-step problems presented in a story, often with a twist in the final line.

A study plan that works backwards from the date

  1. Six weeks out Download the free sample papers for your level from the official site and work through one, untimed, talking through the reasoning aloud.
  2. Weeks 1 to 4 One past paper per week, timed. Spend more time reviewing than sitting: for each miss, ask whether it was a reading error, a method gap, or a genuinely new idea.
  3. Final two weeks Focus on the 5-point questions from past papers only. These are where the ranking is decided.

Tips that come from the format itself

  • Read the scoring rules for your level each year. Some levels penalise wrong answers and some do not, which changes guessing strategy entirely.
  • The 3-point questions are worth the same effort as they cost. Finish all of them accurately before touching the 5-pointers.
  • Spatial questions reward physically making the shape. Fold a piece of paper, build the cube from blocks, and the answer becomes obvious.

Practice resources

Past papers and official materials

Skills this builds

  • Logical reasoning
  • Spatial visualisation
  • Pattern recognition
  • Careful reading
  • Arithmetic

Read what other students said about preparing