mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

Christmas card 2018

 2018-12-08 
Just like last year and the year before, TD and I spent some time in November this year designing a Chalkdust puzzle Christmas card.
The card looks boring at first glance, but contains 10 puzzles. By splitting the answers into pairs of digits, then drawing lines between the dots on the cover for each pair of digits (eg if an answer is 201304, draw a line from dot 20 to dot 13 and another line from dot 13 to dot 4), you will reveal a Christmas themed picture. Colouring the region of the card labelled R red or orange will make this picture even nicer.
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 be split into pairs of digits, lines will be drawn between the pairs, and the red region will be coloured...
If you enjoy these puzzles, then you'll almost certainly enjoy this year's puzzle Advent calendar.
                        
(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.
Someone told me I would like this puzzle and they were right!
Blaine
×1                 Reply
@Carmel: It's not meant to check your answers. It only shows up red if the number you enter cannot be split into valid pairs (eg the number has an odd number of digits or one of the pairs of digits is greater than 20).
Matthew
                 Reply
The script for checking the answers doesn't work properly
Carmel
                 Reply
Thank you Shawn!
SueM
                 Reply
So satisfying!
Heather
×1                 Reply
Great puzzle problems! Hint on #9: try starting with an analogous problem using smaller numbers (e.g. 3a + 10b). This helped me to see what I had to do more generally.
Noah
   ×1              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 "a" then "x" then "e" then "s" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2026 

Feb 2026

Christmas (2025) is over
 2025 
▼ show ▼
 2024 
▼ show ▼
 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

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

Archive

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