mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

 2017-11-28 

Christmas (2017) is coming!

Showing all comments about the post Christmas (2017) is coming!. To return to the blog post, click here.

Comments

Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
@neal (@zbvif): Thanks, I've added a clarification to 22
Matthew
                 Reply
Me again

Just for info (clarification?): I read question on 22nd as
22 is two times an odd number. Today's number is the mean of all the answers, on days (including today), that are two times an odd number."

Note my added commas. I was averaging the answers, not the dates. Certainly ambiguous as far as I am concerned.
Only fixed it by 'cheating'. Trying best guessses of averages until I got the correct one.
neal (@zbvif)
                 Reply
Wow. Just discovered I meisread 15th Dec puzzle.

I can tell you that the number of combinations of n As and Bs which contain at at least one uninterrupted sequence of 3 As is 2^n - F3(n+3) where F3 is the fibonaccia variant adding 3 numbers (1,1,2,4,7,13,24 etc.).
Only took me about 8 hours (with some small help form OEIS for the 2 As problem)
Neal (@zbvif)
                 Reply
@Alex: Assume the pancake is 2D
Matthew
      ×1           Reply
With todays puzzle does the pancake have any thickness i.e can we slice the pancake into 2 circular pancakes each with half the thickness or are we to assume its 2D
Alex
                 Reply
@EliK: Yes, the puzzles should all give three digit answers. You must be misinterpreting today's puzzle...
Matthew
                 Reply
Will all puzzle answers be 3 digit numbers? Today (15) I'm getting a much larger number but could be interpreting the puzzle wrong?
EliK
                 Reply
@Charles: No - there is currently no way to check your answers. But on Christmas Eve, once you've attempted all 24 puzzles, a thing will appear telling you how many are right/wrong, so you can know they're all right before attempting the logic puzzle...
Matthew
                 Reply
Just to check I'm not missing something - there's no way to check whether my answers are right or wrong?
Charles
                 Reply
@Neal: Yes, the book starts with page 1 on the left hand side (ie the inside cover), and ends with page 754 on the right (ie the inside back cover).
Matthew
                 Reply
Matthew. Today's (13) puzzle. Books normally have 1st two page spread being pages 2 and 3. The last in this book would be 752,753. This means there would not be a middle two page spread, there would be two...?
Did you assume 1st 2 page spread is pages 1 and 2?
Neal
                 Reply
@Louis: I think they get harder towards the end, plus the final puzzle is probably harder.
Matthew
                 Reply
Are the daily puzzles going to gradually get harder? They seem easier this year... Or is the final puzzle going to be more difficult?
Louis
                 Reply
@Neal: No, there may be zeroes in the three digit numbers (but you can discard these when solving the final logic puzzle as there are no zeros in the answer to that).
Matthew
                 Reply
Should I worry one of my 3 digit answers contains a zero?
Neal
                 Reply
@Michael: The digits can be the same.
Matthew
                 Reply
Should we assume that the three digits can be the same, or must be different, unless stated otherwise?
Michael
                 Reply
@PatTheHyruler: Nope, anyone is allowed to enter.
Matthew
                 Reply
Is the contest UK-only?
PatTheHyruler
                 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 "ratio" 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

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

Archive

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