While some people have a way with words, Kei Nishimura-Gasparian has a way with numbers.

Kei, an eighth-grader at Fairfield Woods Middle School, cut short a Washington, D.C., school trip yesterday to head off to Denver to compete in the 2008 Lockheed Martin Mathcounts 2008 National Competition. He's one of four students from the state who qualified for the event.

Kei's parents may have played a role in his knack for math. Kei's father, Renato, is an architect who used to challenge a young Kei on road trips. Instead of singing on those long rides, or trying to spot out-of-state license plates, Renato and Kei would throw calculations at each other and come up with the answers. When Kei was an infant, his mother, June, often counted numbers to calm her son down. This worked better than singing lullabies.

Kei showed an affinity for math at a young age. He was counting numbers in three different languages before he was out of diapers. By the time Kei was 5, his addition skills were above and beyond that of his schoolmates, thanks to an older brother. Adding wasn't a chore. It was fun. Two plus two equals four, four plus four equals eight. And on and on and on. "He would keep doubling into the thousands," said Renato.

Even if

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Kei doesn't take home top prize at the national competition today, just making it this far is an accomplishment in itself. Regional Mathcounts events throughout the country and beyond such as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands involved 41,000 students from 6,300 schools. That 41,000 after regional and state competitions has been cut down to 228 competitors for the national competition. When you do the math, according to Renato, just being one of the 228 competitors in the national tournament means Kei and the 227 others "make up less than one half of 1 percent of all that began."

Kei never expected to reach such heights. His initial goal was "just to make states," said Renato. However, now that he's gone farther than he foresaw, he has a new objective: placing in the top 25 percentile of the national tournament. He just may do it. On one quiz in his advanced geometry class (a high school-level class), the class average was a 50. Kei scored a B-plus. That was one day where Kei fared far better than others who also are well-versed in mathematics.

He'd love another day like that in Denver. He's studying hard to be as ready as possible. "I'll just try my best," said Kei, who admits all the studying for regional, state and nationals has had a bit of an impact on his social life. "I haven't been able to go out on weekends," he said. "This past weekend was the first time out with friends in two weeks."

No person who has ever reached a level of success does it all on his own. Kei owes a lot to making it to the nationals to a number classmates in his geometry class, which is taught by Marie Carloni. Those classmates Neil Gade, Isabelle Kazarian and Hyunsoo Kim were part of a four-person team that won the regional tournament (Connecticut southwest chapter) and placed fifth in the state tourney. Everyone studied together and helped one another out. The team usually practiced at least once during the school week and also for a few hours on weekends.

Members would take the problem sets from the previous year's competition and then discuss how each person solved the problem. If someone had trouble with a problem, another teammate would explain how to come to a solution. There is sometimes more than one way to go about solving a problem, said Kei, but "the answer is the same either way."

The regional competition took place at Fairfield University in early February and the state tournament in Hartford on March 8. In addition to preparing for the competition with his classmates, Kei got a substantial amount of help from one of his teammates' fathers, Venkat Gade. Fairfield Woods Middle School did not sponsor an official team, with a teacher as coach, so Gade assumed coaching duties for the young math wizards. Gade is a market strategist for a fund management company.

In addition to the team placing fifth in the state competition, Kei and Hyunsoo finished first and second, respectively, in the countdown round, which Gade described as a "very fast-paced, one-on-one contest of wits."

If Kei places in the top 12 of the written category of the national competition, he will advance to the countdown round. The winner of the countdown round becomes the national champion.

Gade is proud of what the team and Kei already have accomplished. Since the team was not sponsored by the school, it got off to a bit of a late start. The students didn't start practicing until December. Many school-sponsored teams begin preparing as early as September and compete every year, according to Gade. "They exceeded my wildest dreams in accomplishing [what they accomplished]," said Gade.

About Kei, Gade said, "I think he has a very natural talent and aptitude for mathematics, and I think he has a very high level of problem solving that's essential for doing well in these sort of competitions."

Another parent, Dick Kazarian, said Kei "really took a leadership role" with the team. "Kei showed leadership by informing the group about the details of the competition as well as finding extra problems and other resources," he said.

June gave some credit for Kei's success in the math world to Gary Kass, the principal of Burr Elementary School and the former principal of Dwight Elementary School. "He [Gary] was an advocate of gifted programs," said June. "He would test the kids in the first or second grade. If he detected talent, he'd create a pull-out group. Kei was pulled out from first grade and put into an advanced math program. I think that really helped him to challenge himself."