Computer Talent Search Olympiad Senior Grades 10 & 11 Question Paper 2017

Name of the Organization : Computer Olympiad South Africa
Examination Name : Talent Search Olympiad 2018
Announcement : Talent Search Olympiad Senior Question Paper 2017
Category : Grades 10 and 11
Year : 2017
Type : Past Papers
Website : http://olympiad.org.za/talent-search/past-papers/pen-and-paper/
Download Question Paper :
2017 TS Q Senior : https://www.southafricain.com/uploads/9843-2017SENIOR.pdf
2016 TS Q Senior : https://www.southafricain.com/uploads/9843-2016Senior.pdf
2015 TS Q Senior :  https://www.southafricain.com/uploads/9843-2015Senior.pdf

Computer Talent Search Olympiad Senior Question Paper

** To download the 2017 Senior (Grades 10 and 11) paper, for 2017 TS Q Senior

Related / Similar Olympiad :

Computer Olympiad Talent Search Solutions Guide 2022

Computer Talent Search Intermediate Grades 8 & 9 Question Paper 2017

** The Talent Search is the South African version of the Bebras Contest which attracts more than a million participants in the rest of the world each year.
** The Talent Search is an online test, but for those schools with inadequate connectivity a pen-and-paper version is available which does not require computers.

Instructions On Computer Talent Search Olympiad

** Grades 10 and 11
** Not To Be Used Before 6 March 2017
** If you are NOT in grades 8 or 9, please report that you have the wrong paper.
** Only when the teacher says “START”, may you begin.
1. Write your personal details and your answers on the answer sheet provided.
2. You will have 45 minutes to complete the 15 tasks.
3. You may answer the questions in any order, but it is important to place the answer in the correct line on the answer sheet.
4. Leave the tasks you find difficult for later.

The mark allocation is as follows:
A section: +6 marks for every correct answer
B section: +7 marks for every correct answer
C section: +7 marks for every correct answer
** The maximum mark is 100.
** Wait for the teacher to say “START”.

Computer Talent Search Olympiad Sample Questions

A1 Secret Messages :
Agents Boris and Bertha communicate using secret messages. Boris wants to send Bertha the secret message:
MEETBILLYBEAVERAT6
He writes each character in a 4 column grid from left to right and row by row starting from the top. He puts an X in any unused spaces. The result is shown below.
Then he creates the secret message by reading the characters from top to bottom and column by column starting from the left:
MBYVTEIBE6ELERXTLAAX Bertha then uses the same method to reply to Boris.
The secret message she sends him is: OIERKLTEILH!WBEX

Question : What message does Bertha send back** Write the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: OKWHERETOMEET!
B: OKIWILLBETHERE!
C: WILLYOUBETHERETOO?
D: OKIWILLMEETHIM!

A2 Blossom Jane is playing a computer game. First the computer secretly chooses colours for five buds without showing the colours. The available colours for each flower are blue, orange, and pink. Jane has to guess which flower has which colour. She makes her first five guesses and presses the Blossom button to make the buds blossom. The buds, whose colours she guessed correctly, break into flowers. The others remain as buds.

Question: What colours did the computer choose for the flowers** Write down the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: blue pink blue orange orange
B: pink blue blue blue orange
C: pink blue blue pink orange
D: pink pink blue pink orange

A3 Magic Potions Betaro Beaver has discovered five new magic potions:
** one makes ears longer
** another makes teeth longer
** another makes whiskers curly
** another turns the nose white
** the last one turns eyes white.
Betaro put each magic potion into a separate beaker. He put pure water into another beaker, so there are six beakers in total. The beakers are labeled A to F. The problem is, he forgot to record which beaker contains which magic potion! To find out which potion is in each beaker, Betaro set up the following experiments:

Experiment 1: A beaver drinks from beakers A, B and C together – the effects are shown in Figure 1.
Experiment 2: A beaver drinks from beakers A, D and E together – the effects are shown in Figure 2.
Experiment 3: A beaver drinks from beakers C, D and F together – the effects are shown in Figure 3.

Question: Which beaker contains pure water? Write down the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.

A4 Concurrent Directions :
In a warehouse, three robots always work as a team. When the team gets a direction instruction (N, S, E, W), all robots in the grid will move one square in that direction at the same time. After following a list of instructions, the robots all pick up the object found in their final square. For example, if we give the instructions N, N, S, S, E to the team, then robot A will pick up a cone, robot B will pick up a ring, and robot C will pick up a cone.

Question : Which list of instructions can be sent to the robots so that the team picks up exactly a sphere, a cone, and a ring? Write down the letter of the correct instructions in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: N, E, E, E
B: N, E, E, S, E
C: N, N, S, E, N
D: N, E, E, S, W

A5 Health Care :
Doctor Hamid wants to build three hospitals for the beavers. The hospitals can only be built on the places shown by a letter on the map below. To get to a hospital, the beavers should not have to swim through more than one stream from any of these places.

Question: Where should Doctor Hamid build his hospitals? Write down the letter of the best three places in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: A, B, G
B: K, B, I
C: E, H, G
D: B, C, K

B1 Rafting  :
Beavers build rafts. For river traffic control, all rafts should be registered. This means that each raft should have a license plate with unique text. The text is made up of letters and digits as shown in the illustration below. The licence must start with the letter B and end with the digit 0 or 1.B1 Rafting Beavers build rafts. For river traffic control, all rafts should be registered. This means that each raft should have a license plate with unique text. The text is made up of letters and digits as shown in the illustration below. The licence must start with the letter B and end with the digit 0 or 1.

Question: Which one of the license plates cannot be registered? Write down the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: BB0001
B: BBB011
C: BB0100
D: BR00A0
E: BSA001
F: BE0S01

B2 Triangles :
A Learner wants to create a mosaic with identical, triangle-shaped tiles. He starts with one tile. He rotates it 90 degrees clockwise and then adds tiles on each side of the triangle-shaped tile, as shown in the picture below. Then he rotates the whole shape 90 degrees clockwise again and adds tiles to the sides as before.

Question: What will the final shape of the mosaics be after step 3? Write the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.

B3 Segway :
Jan has a special vehicle that looks like a Segway. He moves it by pressing two buttons: a button on the left, and a button on the right.
When he presses a button, the wheel on that side of the vehicle rotates: If both buttons are pushed at the same time, both wheels rotate and the vehicle moves forward. If he pushes a single button, only one wheel rotates and the vehicle turns.
Example : The follow table shows which button was pushed when, and how the vehicle moved from location 1 to location 2.

Question: Here is a record of the button presses from a different journey:
The vehicle is in a large rectangular room. The vehicle kept going until it hit one of the walls. At the start the vehicle was facing towards the upper wall. Towards which wall was the vehicle facing at the end of the journey? Write down the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: upper wall
B: lower wall
C: left wall
D: right wall

B4 Bike Paths :
Cleveria is a beaver biker. She explores the one-way paths that pass through the villages in her district.
Each village has a village stone labelled with a single letter. All the paths have a distance and a direction.
The distance and direction are given by the flags. Over the course of many different trips Cleveria leaves notes that include a number under a stone in each village.
The notes are about the distance from village A to the village with the note under the stone.

Question: What is the meaning of the numbers she has left under the stones? Write down the letter of your answer in the appropriate block on your answer sheet.
A: The shortest distance going through the least number of villages
B: The shortest distance from village A to this village
C: The shortest distance to this village by taking a left turn at crossings if possible
D: The shortest distance to this village by taking a right turn at crossings if possible

Additional Generic Procedure

To download the Computer Talent Search Olympiad South Africa question paper, you can follow these steps:
1) Go to the Computer Olympiad website
2) Click on the “Talent Search” tab.
3) Under “Past Papers”, click on the “Pen-and-paper” link.
4) Select the year and grade level of the question paper you want to download.
5) Click on the “Download” button.

The question paper will be downloaded to your computer as a PDF file. You can then open the PDF file and view the question paper.

Here are some additional things to keep in mind:
1) The question papers are available for download from 2019 onwards.
2) The question papers are in PDF format.
3) You can download the question papers for free.
4) You can use the question papers to help you prepare for the Computer Talent Search Olympiad.