Wes Carroll's Puzzler
Easy to visualize but challenging to solve: that's the kind of math puzzle you get here, one per episode. (Do you love the Car Talk Puzzler too? Yeah, that's what I'm trying for here, only with even more of a math bent.)
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Average duration
- 4 minutes
- Episodes
- 24
- Years Active
- 2016
24: Santa's big sleigh [****]
A parking lot has 16 spaces in a row. Twelve cars arrive, each of which requires one parking space, and their drivers choose their spaces at random from among the available spaces. Santa Claus then a…
00:03:59 |
Sun 25 Dec 2016
23: Your prime choice [***]
What’s the largest 2-digit prime factor of “200 choose 100”?
//
Spiciness: *** out of ****
00:04:58 |
Sun 06 Nov 2016
22: Split the check [*]
Last week, two of my friends and I went to a restaurant and had a lovely meal. We decided to evenly split the check, so we asked the waiter to just combine the totals. However, when the waiter came w…
00:02:41 |
Sun 02 Oct 2016
21: The faulty odometer [***]
A faulty car odometer proceeds from digit 3 to digit 5, always skipping the digit
4, regardless of position. For example, after traveling one mile the odometer
changed from 000039 to 000050. If the o…
00:02:40 |
Sun 04 Sep 2016
20: The middle digit [**]
How many three-digit numbers satisfy the property that the middle digit is the average of the first and the last digits?
//
Spiciness: ** out of ****
00:02:51 |
Sun 28 Aug 2016
19: The token tax [**]
A game is played with tokens according to the following rule. In each round, the player with the most tokens gives one token to each of the other players and also places one token into a discard pile…
00:02:44 |
Sun 14 Aug 2016
18: The circular track [***]
Brenda and Sally run in opposite directions on a circular track, starting at diametrically opposite points. They first meet after Brenda has run 100 meters. They next meet after Sally has run 150 met…
00:06:34 |
Sun 31 Jul 2016
17: The red one [***]
My perpetually tricky friend told me that while she was walking through town she saw four particularly vibrant houses. There was an auburn one, a brick one, a cherry one, and one the shade of dogwood…
00:03:35 |
Sun 24 Jul 2016
16: In 80 days [*]
A friend of mine told me that she can walk a mile south, a mile east, a mile north and end up back home. I first thought she lived at the north pole, but she laughed and told me that, since there was…
00:04:27 |
Sun 17 Jul 2016
15: Coats of paint [***]
Working alone, I put two coats of paint on a wall, one before lunch and one after. Yesterday, I began at the usual time. Two hours before lunch I was joined by my good friend Aidan, who paints at th…
00:03:41 |
Sun 03 Jul 2016
14: O gnats, tango! [**]
Earlier this week I was rob...er...exploring tombs and I accidently triggered a trap that locked me in a room. With me are a pair of plates, a few thousand tiny statues of gnats and a puzzle that sho…
00:03:31 |
Sun 19 Jun 2016
13: Order of operands [*]
Cindy was asked by her teacher to subtract 3 from a certain number and then divide the result by 9. Instead, she subtracted 9 and then divided the result by 3, giving an answer of 43. What would her …
00:08:10 |
Sun 05 Jun 2016
12: One light switch [****]
For years you were a lonely prisoner here. But earlier today, you were brought to a courtyard to join the others, where you are all addressed by the Warden. There have been budget cuts, he explains…
00:05:48 |
Sun 29 May 2016
11: The loopiest puzzler [***]
I have four lengths of rope. I hold them so that you can see all eight ends, but you can’t tell which end connects to which other end. You pick a pair of ends, and I tie them together. We repeat -- …
00:03:00 |
Sun 22 May 2016
10: Eight's too many [**]
In the eight-term sequence "a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h", c represents 5, and the sum of any three consecutive terms is 30. What’s a+h?
(Spiciness: ** out of ****)
00:06:14 |
Sun 15 May 2016
09: Coin flip winner [***]
We’re going to play a simple coin-flip game. We take turns flipping a fair coin. The first one to get “heads” wins. You go first.
//
What’s your chance of winning?
//
Spiciness: *** out of ****
00:06:34 |
Sun 08 May 2016
08: Strawberry ice cream [***]
A friend of mine has pictures of his three daughters on his mantle. He took the pictures when each of the girls was a particularly adorable age — the same age for all three of them, as it happens. Un…
00:03:21 |
Sun 01 May 2016
07: Kiana's twin brothers [*]
Kiana has two older twin brothers. The product of their three ages is 128. What is the sum of their three ages?
//
Spiciness: * out of ****
//
(Today’s puzzler comes from the 2009 AMC 10 exam. Learn…
00:03:17 |
Sun 24 Apr 2016
06: That sounds accurate [***]
You have just tested positive for a condition known to affect 1% of the population. However, your doctor assures you that the test for this condition is only 90% accurate. You’re not sure whether t…
00:02:35 |
Sun 17 Apr 2016
05: Ted's three statements [**]
Ted has three numbered statement for us to consider, and he wants to know whether the third one is true. Here they are:
//
1. There are three numbered statements.
2. Two of the three statements are…
00:02:04 |
Sun 10 Apr 2016
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