mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

Christmas card 2017

 2017-12-18 
Just like last year, TD and I spent some time in November this year designing a puzzle Christmas card for Chalkdust.
The card looks boring at first glance, but contains 10 puzzles. Converting the answers to base 3, writing them in the boxes on the front, then colouring the 1s black and 2s orange will reveal a Christmassy picture.
If you want to try the card yourself, you can download this pdf. Alternatively, you can find the puzzles below and type the answers in the boxes. The answers will be automatically converted to base 3 and coloured...
#Answer (base 10)Answer (base 3)
10000000
20000000
30000000
40000000
50000000
60000000
70000000
80000000
90000000
100000000
  1. In a book with 116 pages, what do the page numbers of the middle two pages add up to?
  2. What is the largest number that cannot be written in the form \(14n+29m\), where \(n\) and \(m\) are non-negative integers?
  3. How many factors does the number \(2^6\times3^{12}\times5^2\) have?
  4. How many squares (of any size) are there in a \(15\times14\) grid of squares?
  5. You take a number and make a second number by removing the units digit. The sum of these two numbers is 1103. What was your first number?
  6. What is the only three-digit number that is equal to a square number multiplied by the reverse of the same square number? (The reverse cannot start with 0.)
  7. What is the largest three-digit number that is equal to a number multiplied by the reverse of the same number? (The reverse cannot start with 0.)
  8. What is the mean of the answers to questions 6, 7 and 8?
  9. How many numbers are there between 0 and 100,000 that do not contain the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6?
  10. What is the lowest common multiple of 52 and 1066?
                        
(Click on one of these icons to react to this blog post)

You might also enjoy...

Comments

Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
@Jose: There is a mistake in your answer: 243 (0100000) is the number of numbers between 10,000 and 100,000 that do not contain the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.
Matthew
                 Reply
Thanks for the puzzle!
Is it possible that the question 9 is no correct?
I get a penguin with perfect simetrie except at answer 9 : 0100000 that breaks the simetry.
Is it correct or a mistake in my answer?
Thx
Jose
                 Reply
@C: look up something called Frobenius numbers. This problem's equivalent to finding the Frobenius number for 14 and 29.
Lewis
         ×1        Reply
I can solve #2 with code, but is there a tidy maths way to solve it directly?
C
                 Reply
My efforts were flightless.
NHH
                 Reply
 Add a Comment 


I will only use your email address to reply to your comment (if a reply is needed).

Allowed HTML tags: <br> <a> <small> <b> <i> <s> <sup> <sub> <u> <spoiler> <ul> <ol> <li> <logo>
To prove you are not a spam bot, please type "etik" backwards in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2026 

May 2026

World Cup stickers 2026

Apr 2026

A new puzzle every day
Mixing Wordle with other games

Feb 2026

Christmas (2025) is over
 2025 

Dec 2025

Christmas card 2025

Nov 2025

Christmas (2025) is coming!

Sep 2025

The partridge puzzle

Aug 2025

TMiP 2025 puzzle hunt

Jun 2025

A nonogram alphabet

Mar 2025

How to write a crossnumber

Jan 2025

Christmas (2024) is over
Friendly squares
 2024 

Dec 2024

A regular expression Christmas puzzle
Christmas card 2024

Nov 2024

Christmas (2024) is coming!

Feb 2024

Zines, pt. 2

Jan 2024

Christmas (2023) is over
 2023 
▼ show ▼
 2022 
▼ show ▼
 2021 
▼ show ▼
 2020 
▼ show ▼
 2019 
▼ show ▼
 2018 
▼ show ▼
 2017 
▼ show ▼
 2016 
▼ show ▼
 2015 
▼ show ▼
 2014 
▼ show ▼
 2013 
▼ show ▼
 2012 
▼ show ▼

Tags

php coventry hexapawn gerry anderson bodmas pascal's triangle folding tube maps golden spiral partridge puzzle asteroids ucl royal institution london underground matrix of minors map projections weak imposition geometry programming curvature data visualisation errors bubble bobble rugby manchester quadrilaterals golden ratio javascript platonic solids trigonometry royal baby correlation nonograms harriss spiral draughts logic bluesky tmip reuleaux polygons flexagons folding paper graph theory nine men's morris rhombicuboctahedron stickers dates ternary finite element method dataset fonts statistics edinburgh regular expressions people maths squares game show probability datasaurus dozen pythagoras tetris go hannah fry propositional calculus radio 4 mean machine learning stirling numbers standard deviation triangles mathsteroids logs frobel latex live stream a gamut of games fractals convergence captain scarlet manchester science festival light data menace wool finite group anscombe's quartet wave scattering phd rust kenilworth graphs palindromes runge's phenomenon crossnumber electromagnetic field oeis approximation computational complexity gather town dragon curves countdown talking maths in public preconditioning gaussian elimination misleading statistics databet numbers friendly squares weather station braiding national lottery matrix of cofactors london big internet math-off chess binary final fantasy estimation sorting fence posts python christmas card alphabets matt parker bempp the aperiodical recursion hats games 24 hour maths logo geogebra pi thirteen inverse matrices guest posts pokémon plastic ratio arithmetic sport signorini conditions hyperbolic surfaces numerical analysis chebyshev interpolation video games inline code exponential growth sobolev spaces crosswords kings simultaneous equations mathslogicbot boundary element methods arrangement puzzles noughts and crosses game of life pizza cutting christmas crossnumbers raspberry pi bots martin gardner pac-man football error bars chalkdust magazine mathsjam news warwick dinosaurs newcastle zines tennis determinants european cup pokémon wordle craft polynomials cross stitch matrix multiplication youtube matrices speed realhats coins accuracy advent calendar crochet cambridge wordle turtles probability puzzles sound world cup reddit books pi approximation day

Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼
© Matthew Scroggs 2012–2026