The Competition
Girls' Adventures in Math (GAIM) is a themed math competition for upper elementary and middle school girls, with practice resources sent to email subscribers. GAIM takes place primarily online, in a 2-hour period of your choice within a 1-week window in April.
Questions in the GAIM competition are designed to challenge the way you think, to create new avenues in your problem solving. To get a sense of the kinds of problems you’ll face, visit our sample questions page.
Also, your friends won’t miss out on the fun, because they will be collaborating with you! GAIM is run completely on a team-based format because genius is never alone. Together, we are better, faster, smarter.
If you’re excited by the idea of creative, strategic, out-of-the-box problem-solving, GAIM will rock your socks off!
How does the GAIM 2026 Competition work?
The GAIM 2026 competition consists of two rounds, to be worked on collaboratively by each team:
Round 1 is a set of questions based on the lives of the four historical GAIM 2026 women. The length of this section depends on the team’s competition level.
Round 2 will have a multi-part question centered around one fun math concept. This part will take 30 minutes.
Along with time to set up and read proctor instructions, the whole competition takes around 2 hours. You can choose any 2-hour slot in the window April 13-20, 2026 in which to do the competition, but it has to be done in one sitting.
There are 2 levels of competition: elementary and middle school.
Elementary: grades 3-5 (Round 1 = 12 questions in 45 minutes, Round 2 = 8-10 questions in 30 minutes)
Middle school: grades 6-8 (Round 1 = 16 questions in an hour, Round 2 = 8-10 questions in 30 minutes)
A team must be made up of girls from the same grade-level range.
We are proud to partner with Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) to bring you the competition online. Participating teams will receive directions on how to get set up so you will be ready on GAIM day! Every team will be provided with 4 AoPS accounts, 1 captain + 3 team members. Before the competition, you must log into these accounts and register at AoPS. At competition time, you will log back into your accounts and follow the directions there.
Coaches are responsible for proctoring their teams. The competition may be completed any time within the competition window. Round 1 will take 45-60 minutes, and Round 2 will be 30 minutes with a 10-minute break in between, so plan for a 1.5+ hour slot of time.
Distinctions will be awarded by region. Teams achieving the highest scores in their region will be awarded national distinctions. We will feature all teams on our website, and will release solutions afterwards so you can see how these problems are solved and build your problem-solving muscles!
And that’s GAIM 2026 in a nutshell!
GAIM is brought to you by Math-M-Addicts New York, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that supports young mathematicians in creative, team-based problem solving.