Bellevue boy wins national math title

A Bellevue sixth-grader has proved that he's No. 1 in math, beating out more than 200 other middle-school students Friday to take first place in a national math championship in Denver.

Darryl Wu, 11, is the youngest student to ever become Mathcounts National Champion, according to a spokeswoman for the nonprofit math organization.

The group, based in Alexandria, Va., promotes middle-school mathematics through coaching and competition.

Darryl, who attends Lakeside Middle School in Seattle, had to compete against other high-scoring students and the clock to correctly answer a series of challenging math questions during the final round.

He clinched the championship by answering this question in just 45 seconds:

A set of distinct positive integers has a total of 11 digits, and all the digits are ones. What is the smallest possible sum of the integers in the set? (Answer: 11,234.)

As national champion, Darryl will receive an $8,000 scholarship, a trip to U.S. Space Camp and a laptop computer.

He and teammates Yota Kato of Bothell, Kathleen Zhou of Bellevue and John Zhang of Lynnwood took second place in the Mathcounts team competition.