Puzzle 1
At a recent BrainBashers party, I noted the ages of the children who attended.
Billie was 3, James and Keith were 4, Frankie and Rebecca were 5.
How old was Lara?
Puzzle 2
This BrainBashers safe has a rather unusual control panel.
In order to open the safe, you have to press every single square once only, in the correct sequence, ending on the square marked E.
Each square indicates which square to press next, for example, 2U means move up 2 squares and 3R means move right 3 squares.
Can you determine which square you must start with?
| 4R | 4D | 1R | 1D | 2D | 4L | 1D |
| 1R | 4D | 5D | 2R | 2D | 1L | 4L |
| 2R | 1D | 1L | 2R | 2R | 2D | 2U |
| 2R | 2R | 3U | 3D | 1R | 3U | 6L |
| 3U | 3R | 1D | 2U | 4L | 2D | 3L |
| 3U | 1L | 1R | 1R | 1R | 1R | 2U |
| 6U | E | 2U | 2L | 4L | 1L | 2U |
Note: this puzzle is not interactive, and the safe buttons cannot be clicked.
Puzzle 3
Within the BrainBashers school, the science department has three disciplines.
In total, 280 students study chemistry, 254 students study physics, and 280 students study biology.
In total, 97 students study chemistry and physics, 138 students study physics and biology, and 152 students study chemistry and biology.
73 students study all three disciplines.
Can you determine how many students there are in the science department? The answer is not 814.
Puzzle 4
At the equator the radius of the earth is 6,378 km, so its circumference is almost exactly 40,000 km.
Imagine we had a long rope which went around the equator, this would of course be 40,000 km long.
If we now placed 1 metre sticks vertically all the way around and lay the rope on top of these sticks (so the rope would be 1m higher all the way around) how much extra rope would we require?