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 "p" then "r" then "i" then "m" then "e" 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

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

Archive

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