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Puzzles

11 December

Noel has a large pile of cards. Half of them are red, the other half are black. Noel splits the cards into two piles: pile A and pile B.
Two thirds of the cards in pile A are red. Noel then moves 108 red cards from pile A to pile B. After this move, two thirds of the cards in pile B are red.
How many cards did Noel start with?
Note: There was a mistake in the original version of today's puzzle. The number 21 has been replaced with 108.

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10 December

Today's number is the smallest multiple of 24 whose digits add up to 24.

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9 December

Put the digits 1 to 9 (using each digit exactly once) in the boxes so that the sums are correct. The sums should be read left to right and top to bottom ignoring the usual order of operations. For example, 4+3×2 is 14, not 10. Today's number is the product of the numbers in the red boxes.
+×= 54
× + ÷
-÷= 1
÷ - ×
+-= 6
=
18
=
6
=
18

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Tags: numbers, grids

8 December

The residents of Octingham have 8 fingers. Instead of counting in base ten, they count in base eight: the digits of their numbers represent ones, eights, sixty-fours, two-hundred-and-fifty-sixes, etc instead of ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.
For example, a residents of Octingham would say 12, 22 and 52 instead of our usual numbers 10, 18 and 42.
Today's number is what a resident of Octingham would call 11 squared (where the 11 is also written using the Octingham number system).

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7 December

There are 15 dominos that can be made using the numbers 0 to 4 (inclusive):
The sum of all the numbers on all these dominos is 60.
Today's number is the sum of all the numbers on all the dominos that can be made using the numbers 5 to 10 (inclusive).

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6 December

There are 12 ways of placing 2 tokens on a 2×4 grid so that no two tokens are next to each other horizonally, vertically or diagonally:
Today's number is the number of ways of placing 5 tokens on a 2×10 grid so that no two tokens are next to each other horizonally, vertically or diagonally.

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5 December

Carol rolled a large handful of six-sided dice. The total of all the numbers Carol got was 521. After some calculating, Carol worked out that the probability that of her total being 521 was the same as the probability that her total being 200. How many dice did Carol roll?

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4 December

Today's number is a three digit number which is equal to the sum of the cubes of its digits. One less than today's number also has this property.

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