mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

Christmas card 2016

 2016-12-20 
Last week, I posted about the Christmas card I designed on the Chalkdust blog.
The card looks boring at first glance, but contains 12 puzzles. Converting the answers to base 3, writing them in the boxes on the front, then colouring the 1s green and 2s red 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)
1000000000
2000000000
3000000000
4000000000
5000000000
6000000000
7000000000
8000000000
9000000000
10000000000
11000000000
12000000000
  1. The square number larger than 1 whose square root is equal to the sum of its digits.
  2. The smallest square number whose factors add up to a different square number.
  3. The largest number that cannot be written in the form \(23n+17m\), where \(n\) and \(m\) are positive integers (or 0).
  4. Write down a three-digit number whose digits are decreasing. Write down the reverse of this number and find the difference. Add this difference to its reverse. What is the result?
  5. The number of numbers between 0 and 10,000,000 that do not contain the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.
  6. The lowest common multiple of 57 and 249.
  7. The sum of all the odd numbers between 0 and 66.
  8. One less than four times the 40th triangle number.
  9. The number of factors of the number \(2^{756}\)×\(3^{12}\).
  10. In a book with 13,204 pages, what do the page numbers of the middle two pages add up to?
  11. The number of off-diagonal elements in a 27×27 matrix.
  12. The largest number, \(k\), such that \(27k/(27+k)\) is an integer.
                        
(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.
@Matthew: Thank you for the prompt response! It makes sense now and perhaps I should have read a little closer!
Dan Whitman
                 Reply
@Dan Whitman: Find the difference between the original number and the reverse of the original. Call this difference \(a\). Next add \(a\) to the reverse of \(a\)...
Matthew
            ×1     Reply
In number 4 what are we to take the difference between? Do you mean the difference between the original number and its reverse? If so when you add the difference back to the reverse you simply get the original number, which is ambiguous. I am not sure what you are asking us to do here.
Dan Whitman
                 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 "o" then "d" then "d" 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

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

Archive

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