Puzzle 1
Can you find anagrams of the following words?
aspirate
alarming
bleating
decimate
creative
cheating
download
gradient
altitude
generate
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hints
The first letters of the words are: P, M, T, M, R, T, W, T, L, T.
Answers
parasite
marginal
tangible
medicate
reactive
teaching
woodland
treading
latitude
teenager
Puzzle 2
My trustworthy (?!) BrainBashers word processor is playing its silly tricks again.
This time, it has replaced all of the consonants with random ones.
I can at least be thankful that it has left the vowels untouched.
Can you find all of the animals?
fahjec
qsaxe
eep
zoth
epessawx
feyuv
zowqud
pol
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hints
The first letters of the words are: B, S, E, W, E, L, P, C.
Answers
Any animal that fits is correct, but these are possible answers:
fahjec = badger, barbet, gannet, marten
qsaxe = crane, skate, snake, whale
eep = eel
zoth = fowl, lory, moth, pony, wolf, worm
epessawx = elephant
feyuv = lemur, xerus
zowqud = possum
pol = cod, cow, dog, fox, hog
Puzzle 3
What number comes next in this sequence:
1 · 4 · 8 · 13 · 21 · 30 · 36 · ?
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hint
Try writing the numbers out as letters.
Answer
45.
Reasoning
Each term increases by the number of letters in the previous term (ignoring any hyphens).
1 + length("ONE") = 4
4 + length("FOUR") = 8
8 + length("EIGHT") = 13
13 + length("THIRTEEN") = 21
21 + length("TWENTYONE") = 30
30 + length("THIRTY") = 36
36 + length("THIRTYSIX") = 45
Puzzle 4
My local greengrocer is a would-be mathematician.
She likes to arrange the apples in nice rows.
When she lays the apples in rows of 3, she has one left over.
And, when she lays them in rows of 5, she also has one left over.
Remarkably, she also has one left over when she arranges them in rows of 7 and 9.
But 11 seems to be the magic number, because in rows of 11 there are no apples left over.
How many apples does she have?
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hint
There are fewer than 1,000 apples.
Answer
946 apples.
Reasoning
We know that (answer − 1) is divisible by 3, 5, 7, and 9.
If it's divisible by 9 then it's automatically divisible by 3.
So the number must be a multiple of 5, 7, and 9.
[5 x 7 x 9 = 315]
Since these numbers share no other common factors, we know that the answer must be a multiple of 315 (+ 1).
Let's try 1 x 315 + 1: 316 ÷ 11 = 28.73, and this doesn't work.
Let's try 2 x 315 + 1: 631 ÷ 11 = 57.36, and this doesn't work.
Let's try 3 x 315 + 1: 946 ÷ 11 = 86, and this works, and is the answer.