Does any one know if and how the mathcount difficulty level incr

If you child took part in mathcount in Washington DC, how did he feel the difficulties of the problems over the previous state mc problems. I heard that the format should be the same. I sat in audience for one round of the state competition and felt the time pressure was intense: paired students raced to the solution by pressing a bell within 40"; if pressed first but answered wrong, the second student would have an additional 40" to solve it. Some students were so fast, answered the questions correctly even before I started reading the question shown on the screen. Didn't know how that could happen.