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Brain Teasers
Monthly Brain Teaster and April’s Answer
Thursday, May 16th, 2013Last month’s problem was: can you place all the numbers from 1 to 9 into a 3 x 3 grid such that each line – vertical, horizontal and diagonal – adds up to 15? And I suggested that you work out with logic rather than just playing about with the numbers. The middle square clearly [...]
Monthly Brain Teaster and March’s Answer
Tuesday, April 9th, 2013Last month’s problem was: By using each digit from 1 to 9 plus 0 once only, and any of the symbols +, -, x, ÷ and ( ), produce a total of 100. There may be several solutions, but a simple one is: 50½ + 49 + (38÷76) = 100 Now this month, can [...]
Monthly Brain Teaster and February’s Answer
Tuesday, March 26th, 2013Last month you were left with this little problem: The following piece of old verse has all the vowels, spaces and punctuation removed. What does it say? fllthwrldwrpplp ndllthswrnk ndllthtrswrbrdndchs whtwldwhvtdrnk The answer is a very old piece of nonsense verse: If all the world were apple pie And all the sea were ink, And [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and Januarys Answer
Friday, February 15th, 2013Last month you were left with this little problem: I have two cubes of mahogany that I want to have on my desk to show the number of the day of the month. What numbers should I paint on the surfaces? I want always to use two cubes, for example the 3rd of the month [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and Decembers Answer
Thursday, January 24th, 2013This was your Christmas puzzle: A warlord wishes to close down his jail and use it for his new leisure complex. But what to do with the ten prisoners? He is torn between brutality and generosity so decides to employ both. He visits the prisoners in their communal cell and tells them this: “In the [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and November’s Answer
Thursday, December 13th, 2012Last month you were asked to use only the four common arithmetical symbols + – x and ÷ to make 1,000 using only 9s? One answer is 9 ÷ 9, + 999. However there are others. Did you get any of them? Now here is one to keep people quiet over Christmas: A warlord wishes [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and October’s Answer
Thursday, November 15th, 2012Last month you were asked to decipher the following message: YJOD OD PMR GPT LRUNPSTF IDRTD The answer? Use a normal typewriter keyboard but press the key to the left of the one shown in the message and you will see what it is about. Now this month: Using only the four common arithmetical symbols [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and September’s Answer
Monday, October 8th, 2012Last month you were asked to look at the following five words: POSSE MAR OPERA SCRAM STUB Four of them can be turned into four new words by adding the same three letters at the end, but one cannot. What are the three letters and which is the odd word out? POSSE is the odd [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and August’s Answer
Thursday, September 13th, 2012Last month’s problem was: Two locomotives are travelling towards each other on the same stretch of single track railway, locomotive A at 20mph and locomotive B at 15mph. A bird takes off from the front of locomotive A at 1.00pm and flies towards locomotive B at 30mph. It touches the front of B then reverses [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and July’s Answer
Thursday, August 2nd, 2012Last month’s problem was: You need to measure out 4 pints of a liquid but have only a 3 and a five pint jug. How will you do it? To answer, let’s call the two jugs [3] and [5]. Sounds logical. Fill [5]. Fill [3] from [5], leaving 2 pints in [5]. Empty [3] – [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and June’s Answer
Monday, July 9th, 2012This is last month’s problem: You are in charge of a bank’s vault and have just taken delivery of one hundred gold ingots, confiscated from a criminal. There are ten ingots in each of ten identical boxes. Each gold ingot weighs exactly one kilogram. However you have been told that the ingots in one box [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and May’s Answer
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012Last month you were left with this problem: A man travels to work at 6.00am at an average speed of 60mph. He returns home by the same route at 6.00pm when the road is heavily congested at an average speed of 40mph. What is his average speed for the round trip? Well, if you answered [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and April’s Answer
Monday, April 30th, 2012The problem you were left with last month was this: You have carefully packed for export fifteen pairs of black gloves and fifteen pairs of brown gloves. Your boxes can hold only ten pairs of gloves, therefore you have packed one box full of black gloves, one of brown, and one of black and brown [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and March’s Answer
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012This month you were left to make sense of this: Look east and recognise new comets emerging near the receding ectoplasm Two revellers attended Irish Night in New Guinea I,m soon getting out of debt Find out regarding your own usage. Well, if you read just the first letter of each word you will receive [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and Februarys Answer
Friday, March 9th, 2012Last month you were told that a scientist is growing bacteria in a laboratory dish. Once a minute each bacterium divides into two. She places one bacterium in the dish at 9.30am. At 10.20am the dish is half full. You were asked at what time it would be full. Well, since the number of bacteria [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and Januarys Answer
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012Last month you were left with this problem: The managing director rang the payroll department and told the trainee who answered the phone that he needed by lunchtime without fail the average salary of the ten people who made up the management group. He rang off before she was able to tell him that the [...]
Monthly Brain Teaser and Decembers Answer
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012For Christmas you were given this problem: A baron builds a castle on a square island and surrounds the island with a moat that in turn forms a square. The moat is 10 metres wide. An enemy decides to attack the castle by crossing the moat on long strengthened planks. Unfortunately when they arrive they [...]
Monthly Brainteaser and November’s answer
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011Last month you were given this problem: A large army of infantry was marching along roads through a country at a steady 3mph. The column was 9 miles long. A despatch rider at the rear of the column was sent with an urgent message to the commander at the front of the column. He delivered [...]
Monthly Brainteaser and October’s answer
Monday, November 7th, 2011Last month you were asked what the following weird sentences have in common – and which is the odd one out? If you are deaf you should file your tax return before the rainy season begins. When the sailors’ mission inducted a young female pastor, quayside services at both ports were resumed. Edmund took pickled [...]
Monthly Brainteaser and September’s answer
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011Last month I asked you think up a word, a singular noun that, if you add one letter to the end, becomes plural and, if you add the same letter to the end again, becomes singular again. I came up with: Prince - princes - princess. How about you? Now, for this month, what do [...]
