BUILDATHON

You do not need any hardware

Every one of the 24 themes — including all six in Robotics — can be built end to end in a browser. The Curious Labs Circuits and Arduino studios simulate sixteen sensors, motors, servos, relays and displays. A school with no robotics lab competes on exactly the same terms as a school with one. Centres that own hardware may run a physical demonstration alongside; it is scored on the same rubric and earns no extra marks.

If you choose M6, read this

Build it for a named person with a real difficulty — someone you know, or someone you have actually spoken to. Judges are briefed to reward respect and specificity, and to mark down entries that use disabled people as decoration for a gadget.

Why Senior Round 1 asks you to read code, not only write it

Almost every coding olympiad in the country tests whether you can write a program. Very few test whether you can read somebody else’s broken one and find out why it fails — which is most of the actual job, and which you cannot cram for. Three of the fifteen Senior problems are debugging problems, and they carry the heaviest marks.

If you choose C6, one extra rule

Write your definition of “fair” down, in words, before you write any code — it goes on your Entry Card. Half the learning in this theme is discovering that fairness has several definitions and they disagree with each other.

What this ministry is not

Nothing in this category involves attacking a real computer, a real account or a real network. Every puzzle is a self-contained artefact generated by Curious Labs for you. Attempting anything against live systems — ours or anyone else’s — is an immediate and permanent disqualification for the student and, if a coach was involved, for the school. See page 25.

At the Regionals, the vaults leave the screen

Codes are hidden across the venue. You scan them with the Curious Labs app itself — no other scanner is permitted — and each scan unlocks the next stage of your vault against your own login. Expect at least one decoy, and expect reading it to cost you.

About data and people

If your project collects data from real people — faces, voices, handwriting, answers — you must have asked them, they must be able to say no, and you must not submit the raw data with your entry. Your Entry Card states whose data it was and how you asked. Entries that cannot answer that are withdrawn.

Why two of the six are lenses

Because a competition that only rewards accuracy teaches children to chase a number and stop thinking. A team that draws Teaching a Machine to See still has to answer who their model fails and how it decided — and a team that draws a lens applies it to a domain of their own choosing.

Why we do not simply take the national top 2,400

Because that would hand the whole championship to a handful of big-city schools, and it would tell a first-time school in a small town that there was never any point entering. Regional places are allocated three ways: 60% by rank within your own zone, 25% to the best entrant in each school, and 15% from a wildcard pool that the committee uses to keep first-time schools, smaller towns and girls' participation properly represented. The exact allocation is published before Round 1 opens, and it does not change afterwards.

What your school must do before the window opens

Complete both dry runs. One four weeks before, one the week before. They take twenty minutes, they use the real arena, and they exist so that a browser problem, a login problem or a firewall problem is found on a Tuesday in practice rather than in the middle of a child’s attempt. A school that has not completed a dry run will get a phone call, not a disqualification — but we would rather make the call early.

Junior band: this is the summit, and it is treated as one

Grades 3–5 finish their championship here. Every zone crowns Junior champions in all four ministries, on the same stage, with the same trophies and the same ceremony as the older bands. It is an arrival, not an exit.

Why the middle act exists

Because a national final that only asks “does it work?” rewards polish, and polish can be bought. Asking a finalist to take apart somebody else’s work, in front of them, tests something that cannot be coached and cannot be outsourced — and it turns the last day from a science fair into an engineering review.

Signals & Secrets is a puzzle competition, not a hacking competition

Every cipher, hash and vault in this championship is a self-contained artefact we generated for you. Nothing in this book asks you to touch a real system. Attempting anything against a live computer, account or network — including ours — ends the student’s championship immediately and permanently, and if a member of staff encouraged it, the school’s too.

And the real proctor is the Regionals

A student who cannot reproduce their Round 1 standard in person — on a surprise task nobody saw coming, in front of a judge who will ask how it works — does not advance. We publish this rule up front on purpose. It makes cheating in Round 1 pointless rather than merely risky.

If something goes wrong

Report it through the help desk while it is happening. Your attempt state lives on our server, so a crash does not cost you your entry. Appeals must reach the Organising Committee within seven days of publication.

Everything on this page is marked TBC until the Organising Committee confirms it. Any change will be published at least 21 days before it takes effect, and your coordinator will be emailed directly.

To register, or to ask anything at all

learn.curiouslabs.online/buildathon
Registration, the schedule, the practice arena and the current version of this rule book all live there.

Indicative placement only

The organisations named on this page and on the cover are shown to illustrate how each partner tier will be presented. Partnerships are under discussion and none is yet confirmed. This page will be reissued as each one is signed, and no organisation appears as a confirmed partner until it has agreed in writing.