Neither of the options looked feasible.

We could delay scoring the Rhode Island Academic Decathlon, held Sunday, March 12 at CCRI for a couple of days, which would mean elimination of the awards ceremony and the thrill of the event as students are called from the audience to receive bronze, silver and gold medals. Or, we could hand score more than 2,000 test sheets. Not only would that have been highly time consuming, but there was the possibility of misreading the “bubble” filled answers that were designed to be read by a scanner.

Some people love challenges like this – finding their way out of the box canyon when flash flood waters are drowning all hopes.

One thing was working in our favor. It was time. Mathematics is the first in the series of tests to be given during the daylong competition involving 200 students from 15 high schools. Once the test was completed, the forms were delivered to the testing room where Jonathan Reed, who was a member of the Wheeler School team years ago, and former Johnston decathlete Matthew Denicourt started the process of batch feeding the score sheets into scanners that in turn fed the data into a laptop computer.

Everything was set up and ready to go, or so we thought. Jon and Mary Johnson, RIAD executive director, made a dry run the weekend before. A second scanner had been purchased to cover if there was a breakdown and, on top of that, there was the backup of a service contract. It looked like all the bases were covered.

Jon and Matt started feeding the math test scores into the scanners. Some were being read but both machines were spitting about 70 percent of them back out. Jon and Matt went into the program and made adjustments to no avail. They carefully examined the offending forms, using scissors to trim what might be considered ragged edges. Their work had no effect.

Mary called the service number and got a recording that no one would be in the office until Monday. The next effort was to try to get someone at the United States Academic Decathlon in hopes that they would have an emergency service number. That was another dead end.

Seemingly, the only option was to wait until Monday. Competition results would have to be delayed. Medals and plaques would be delivered to the schools and students. The end of the day when the public got to see the super quiz and the stars of the competition would be a bust.

Or would it?

Some people look for ways out of box canyons. Jon, who left MIT to work for a software company, is one of them. He seemed to be in a different place than the rest of the crew now focused on the logistics of getting the scanning company to identify and remedy the problem and then score the tests. Jon was bent over a single form – one of the forms the scanner read – and carefully whiting out one scanner line. Through a process of elimination, he discovered a single line no longer than a sixteenth of an inch that was slightly darker on the forms that were being read. Using a pencil, he darkened lines on several of the forms that had been rejected. They now sailed through the scanner. He had identified the problem: inconsistently printed forms.

Suddenly everything looked much brighter. A cadre of volunteers was recruited to hand darken the single line on forms that had been used as well as those being sent out for the next round of tests. The awards ceremony went off as planned.

The Decathlon provided a new lesson. When you think about it, education is not just about the right answers, but finding ways to get to them.

Jon wasn’t going to be stumped, and that was a good thing.