Day 12 — Papers 06 & 07
Plan
Date: Sat Sep 19, 2026 · Mode: timed, closed book, no venv
Papers: paper-06.md (visualization + QASM) · paper-07.md (hard — every question carries a trap)
The last two half-length papers, and the hardest pair. Paper 06 is the only paper weighted towards §6 and §8, the two sections a single teaching day had to cover between them. Paper 07 is deliberately nastier than the real exam.
Both papers: 34 questions, 45 minutes, pass mark 24.
Timing
| Block | Time | What |
|---|---|---|
| Morning review | 15 min | The three rules you wrote on Day 11 — from memory |
| Paper 06 | 45 min | Strict timer, closed book |
| Grade 06 | 45 min | paper-06-answers.md |
| Break | 60 min | Away from the desk |
| Paper 07 | 45 min | Strict timer, closed book |
| Grade 07 | 60 min | paper-07-answers.md — this one needs the extra 15 minutes |
| Debrief | 15 min | Fill in debrief.md |
What each paper is testing
Paper 06 — visualization and OpenQASM. §6 (11%) and §8 (6%) are 17% of the
exam between them and got one teaching day. Recall-heavy and very learnable:
what plot_bloch_multivector does to an entangled state, what the q-sphere
encodes in size versus colour, qasm3.dumps/loads, QASM2 interop. If this
paper goes badly the fix is an hour of re-reading, not a strategy change — and
Day 13 has that hour.
Paper 07 — every question has a trap. Written to be harder than the real thing. Expect the score to drop, and do not read the drop as regression: a 24 here is worth more than a 28 on Paper 02. Its value is that it makes you slow down on the questions that look obvious, which is precisely the habit that wins marks on the full-length papers tomorrow and on exam day.
Targets
- Paper 06: ≥27/34 (79%). Recall-heavy, so the bar is higher.
- Paper 07: ≥24/34 (70%) is a good result. Treat anything at or above the pass mark as a pass on this paper.
- Watch the clock, not just the score. Both papers should finish inside 45 minutes with time to review flagged questions. If you are running out of time on a 34-question paper, tomorrow's 68-question papers will be brutal — pacing goes on the Day 13 list.