Ludwig Bump runs the bank in Mathsville. You have to help him, though, because he has forgotten the combination number of the safe. Fortunately, he does remember some things about the number which may help you to help him.
WHAT IS THE NUMBER WHICH WILL OPEN THE SAFE?
1) Answer
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Spaghetti is famous for the way it all gets tangled up on the plate. Those of you who think they know their alphabet are bound to get all tangled up with this puzzle too, unless you read it and think about it very carefully!
What letter of the alphabet is the one which comes nine letters before the letter which comes three letters after the first letter to occur four times in this sentence?
Get counting, and leave some spaghetti for me!
1) Answer
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The diagram below shows a cross-shaped box containing three numbered blocks.
The puzzle is to slide the blocks around the box until the numbers read 1,2,3 as you go down.
How do you do it?
1) Answer
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Long-haired Mary Jones works for the Milk
Marketing Board. Hairy Mary At The Dairy they call her. That's not
very nice, is it? Anyway, Mary likes to eat her dinner by candlelight
every evening. She saves all the candle ends because when she has
collected seven ends, she can melt them down to make a new
candle.
At the last count she found that she had 34 candles and 50 candle
ends. One candle burns down in one evening. For how many evenings can
Mary have a candlelit dinner before she has to buy more
candles?
Clue: look at the title again!
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If you cut the shaded shape A into two pieces in a certain way, it is possible to make all the other shapes (B, C, D, E, F, G) from the two pieces.
How do you do it?
1) Answer
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What's the difference between a match,
and the gun used at the beginning of a race?
One starts the fire, the other fires the start!
If you had six matches, it would be easy (wouldn't it?) to make two identical triangles. But as you are all well aware, here at Puzzle Corner we don't give you puzzles which are quite that easy!
Your task this week - sadly the last one before the half-term holiday - is to take six matches and make FOUR identical triangles. Do you think you can do it? If you can then you can call yourself a Match-ician. If you can't do it, you'll have to call yourself a lump of Match Potato!
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My grill pan holds three slices of bread when I make toast. Each slice has to be toasted on both sides, of course, and it takes one minute to toast a side, including "turning over time". I can therefore make three slices of toast in two minutes. How long would it take for four slices?
I thought that it would take me four minutes to make four slices, until my friend Hungry Horace said I could do it in just three minutes. How is it done?
1) Answer
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The idea is to plod your way along all the streets on the map above without going down a street you've been down before. Starting and finishing in the places indicated, in what order would you visit the letters on the map?
1) Answer
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There were 100 chocolates in a box. The box was passed down along a row of people. The first person took one sweet. Each person down the row took more sweets than the person before, until the box was empty.
What is the largest number of people that could have been in the row?
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Gurmit Burmit is a hermit - he lives all on his own on a lonely desert island. There is sand all around him: in front of him, behind him and on both sides, as far as Gurmit can see. In fact all he ever eats is sandwiches.
One day Gurmit decided to count the grains of sand. He started off by scooping up two handfuls of sand from the ground. "THERE MUST BE A BILLION GRAINS HERE IN MY HANDS" he thought to himself.
Was he close? Would his hands hold a billion grains of sand, or more, or less?
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If I said that in three days' time it would be a Thursday, I am sure that most of you would have no difficulty telling me that today was a Monday. Try this one then. Yesterday was two days before Monday. What day is it today? Yes, you're right again. It's Sunday. Do you get the idea? Now let's tackle a similar question from The National Mathematics Contest (1991) Paper:
Three days ago, yesterday was the day before Sunday. What day will it be tomorrow?
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In the diagram below, each circle is just big enough to touch all four sides of the square. The area of the square is therefore just a bit more than the area of one of the circles.
I want to know how many of the circles you need to cover the whole square. Is 2 enough? Or do you need 3? Or 4? Or more? You have to find the smallest number of circles that you need, and show me how you arrange them to cover the square completely. Get cutting!
1) Answer
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In the diagram below, there is a simple dart board with five sections. When you throw a dart, you naturally receive that number of points corresponding to the section you hit.
I have just scored 100. How did I do it?
1) Answer
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Father Christmas spends 364 days of the year as a taster of Christmas puddings (which is why he is so round and jolly). Recently he came across a Magic Pudding. If you eat some of this pudding, the next thing you say comes out in a magic code.
Father Christmas tried it, liked it, and said:
"IP! IP! IP! XIBU B MPWFMZ QVEEJOH! NFSSZ DISJTUNBT BOE B IBQQZ OFX ZFBS UP ZPV BMM!"
1) Answer
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No. 1 : "Open The Safe"
The combination number of Ludwig Bump's bank safe in Mathsville is
9861.
A bit of a trick puzzle, really, because out of the five clues I
gave, the last one alone gives you the answer: Just multiply 519 x 19
and you get 9861. The other clues are just for checking.
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No. 2: "Alphabet Spaghetti"
The letter of the alphabet which comes nine letters before the letter
which comes three letters after the first one to occur four times in
this sentence is n.
You get this by working backwards through the puzzle: the first
letter to occur four times is t, three letters after that is w, and
nine letters before that is n. Return to
Top
No. 3: "Blockhead"
No. 4: "Making Ends Meet"
Mary has enough candles for 47 evenings. Let's see why:
34 candles last for 34 evenings, making 34 more ends. Add the 50 ends to make 84 ends, which is enough for exactly 12 new candles. (84 ÷ 7 = 12 remainder 0.) These 12 candles last for 12 evenings, making 12 ends. These 12 ends will make one new candle. (12 ÷ 7 = 1 remainder 5.) This candle lasts for 1 evening, making 1 end. We now have 6 ends left, so we do not have enough for any more candles.
Total: 34 + 12 + 1 = 47 evenings altogether.
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No. 5: "Game For A Half"
Identical? Well, it's close enough
for Jazz..
No. 7: "Toast"
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to Top
No. 8: "Pat's Path Plodding Puzzle"
The diagram illustrates one of many possible routes:
Start-Finish-F-E-A-D-F-C-G-Start-C-B-A-FINISH.
There are several alternative solutions. Return
to Top
No. 9: "Thinking Chocolate"
The longest line of people you can have is thirteen, with the last person taking all the remaining chocolates. There are not enough chocolates for a fourteenth person, because he/she would have to take 14 chocolates (after the previous person had taken 13) and there would be only 9 left. Return to Top
A billion grains is an awful lot of sand! The way to make estimates of large numbers like these is to build them up from smaller amounts by multiplying. Let's imagine that a teaspoon can hold 5000, or even 10000 grains of sand. Now let's assume that Gurmit's hands will hold about 1000 teaspoons of sand. That makes it between 5 000 000 and 10 000 000 grains. A billion is 1 000 000 000 grains. Enough to cover Gurmit from head to foot! Return to Top
Return to
TopNo. 11: "Calendar
Confusion"
In order of popularity, the answers handed in were: Sunday (9), Thursday (4), Monday (3), Friday (2), Wednesday (1), Saturday (1). THE RIGHT ANSWER WAS THURSDAY. Why?
Three days ago, yesterday was the day before
Sunday, so three days ago was itself Sunday.
That means today is Wednesday, so tomorrow is Thursday.
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The actual answer is that you need FOUR circles to cover the square completely, but because it is so difficult to cut out the circles accurately enough to see the tiny gaps that appear, I decided to accept those answers which showed three circles stuck over the square. Return to Top
17+17+17+17+16+16 = 100 Return to Top
Work it out for yourself! Return to Top
Stephen Froggatt February 1999
