Competitions · Mathematics · Caribou Contests
Caribou Contests have been discontinued.
The Caribou series ran six online rounds a year for grades 1 to 12, in English, Chinese or French, and reached 160,000 entrants across 29 countries. It stopped running from 2025. If you were planning to enter, the alternatives are below.
Status
What this page is for.
Caribou Contests no longer run. The series was discontinued from 2025, so there is no entry to plan, no registration to make and no season to prepare for.
This page stays up because the contest still appears in reading lists, school enrichment plans and older guidance, and because a family who finds it should learn that it has ended rather than spend a year preparing for it. What the contest was, and what to consider in its place, are set out below.
What it was
The contest, as it ran.
Caribou was founded by the Canadian mathematics professor Thomas Wolf and ran with the official support of the Canadian Mathematical Society. Its defining feature was that it deliberately did not chase difficulty.
- Founder
- Thomas Wolf, a Canadian mathematics professor, with official support from the Canadian Mathematical Society
- Status
- Discontinued from 2025
- Who it was for
- Students in grades 1 to 12, across seven difficulty levels
- Scale at its peak
- Around 160,000 entrants a year across 29 countries, on a single global ranking
- Format
- Six online rounds a year, 50 minutes each, sat at school or at home on a computer with no special software
- Languages
- English, Chinese or French - candidates chose one
- The Caribou Cup
- An annual points competition running October to May, ranking each student on their best five of the six rounds
- Its approach
- Explicitly not focused on hard problems. The questions were built to be interactive and unfamiliar rather than difficult
- In China
- ASDAN China became the China committee office in 2019
- Results
- Published two days after each round, with global, national, provincial and school rankings and downloadable certificates
The papers
Seven levels, and how each was marked.
Every level used the same escalating structure: an opening third at 3 marks a question, a middle third at 4 and a final third at 5.
| Level | Year groups | Questions | Paper total |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Grade 1 | 9 | 36 |
| B | Grade 2 | 9 | 36 |
| C | Grades 3 and 4 | 12 | 48 |
| D | Grades 5 and 6 | 15 | 60 |
| E | Grades 7 and 8 | 15 | 60 |
| F | Grades 9 and 10 | 15 | 60 |
| G | Grades 11 and 12 | 12 | 48 |
Students could enter a level above their year group but never below it. The North American region grouped its year bands slightly differently from the China region.
What made it different
Why it is worth knowing about even now.
Caribou is the clearest example of a contest built around interaction rather than difficulty, and some of what it produced remains a useful reference for how enrichment can be designed.
Games inside the paper
The platform carried more than twenty interactive games, and every round at every level contained one or two of them. Students played rather than only calculated, which is rare in a ranked contest.
A deliberate difficulty runway
The games ran from classic combinatorial game theory at the simple end - Nim, then Chomp, then Hackenbush - up to genuinely adult-level material, with the machine-play design drawing on ideas from computer game-playing research.
Teaching resources, not just questions
Its geometry module carried more than fifty worksheets covering secondary geometry, and its induction module held the proof steps for over forty theorems and could check whether a student’s steps met the standard.
Best five of six
Ranking on the best five of six rounds meant one bad day did not end a season. It is a structure worth looking for in whatever a student enters instead.
Instead
What to consider in its place.
Nothing replaces Caribou exactly - the interactive format was unusual. These are the closest live options depending on what appealed about it.
For the accessible, wide-entry feel
Math Kangaroo runs at a similar spirit: broad year coverage, questions written to interest rather than intimidate, and a very large international field.
For the multi-round season
MOEMS runs five contests across a school year rather than one sitting, so a season accumulates in the way the Caribou Cup did.
For a ranked progression
SEAMO and AMO both run year-group papers from primary upward with medal bands and international rounds beyond them, if the appeal was a route rather than a single result.
For a school running it as a club
Caribou was often used as a mathematics club activity. MOEMS is designed for exactly that - hosted and marked in school, entered as a whole year group.
Talk to an advisor
Hanlin does not coach Caribou Contests. Ask what it does coach.
The services below are real, but not for this competition. An advisor will say plainly whether there is a route here and what is worth entering instead.
Competition entry and planning
Which competitions suit this student, in what order, and by when - then we handle the registration, including the ones that can only be entered through a school or a centre.
Competition coaching
Taught by full-time subject tutors, on a course tier chosen by placement paper rather than by year group.
International curriculum tutoring
IB, AP, A-Level, IGCSE and the US high school curriculum, taught alongside school and timed around the exam calendar.
Competition past papers, free
A large library of past papers, mark schemes and syllabus breakdowns across every competition on this site. No charge and no enrolment.
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Caribou Contests, briefly answered.
What people still ask about the series.
Can I still enter Caribou Contests?
No. The series was discontinued from 2025 and no longer runs.
What was Caribou?
A global online mathematics contest founded by the Canadian mathematics professor Thomas Wolf, supported by the Canadian Mathematical Society, running six rounds a year for grades 1 to 12 in English, Chinese or French.
How large did it get?
Around 160,000 entrants a year across 29 countries, all on one global ranking.
What was the Caribou Cup?
An annual points competition running from October to May, which ranked each student on their best five results out of the six rounds - so a single poor round did not end a season.
What made the contest unusual?
It explicitly did not focus on difficulty. Every round contained interactive games, and the platform carried over twenty of them, including teaching modules for geometry and for building proofs.
Do my old Caribou results still mean anything?
They remain a legitimate record of what a student achieved in the years the contest ran, and can be cited as such. There is simply no further round to enter.
What should my child enter instead?
It depends what appealed. Math Kangaroo is closest in spirit, MOEMS is closest in season structure, and SEAMO or AMO suit a student who wanted a ranked route with an international round beyond it.
Is there an equivalent with interactive games?
Not directly. The interactive format was distinctive to Caribou, and no current contest of comparable reach reproduces it.
Related
Live alternatives.
Contests currently running that cover similar ground.
Caribou enquiries
If Caribou was the plan, tell us what appealed.
The series has ended, but the reasons families chose it - a whole-season format, a wide year range, questions that interest rather than intimidate - are all still available elsewhere. Tell us the student’s year group and an advisor will suggest the closest fit.