Puzzle 1
What is missing from this sequence:
Greenland · New Guinea · Borneo · Madagascar · ? · Sumatra · Honshu
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Hint
These are all islands.
Answer
Baffin Island.
From the largest islands in the world, in descending order.
Australia is considered the smallest continent, and Greenland the largest island.
Puzzle 2
Which is larger:
seconds in a year.
miles that light can travel in 3 minutes.
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hint
Light travels around 186,000 miles each second.
Answer
Miles that light can travel in 3 minutes.
There are 31,536,000 seconds in a typical year, and light can travel about 33,530,831 miles in 3 minutes.
Puzzle 3
I recently gave a new watch to my friend for their birthday.
However, as usual with my presents, it was quite useless as it gains 6 minutes every hour.
I set it using my own accurate clock at midnight, and the watch now shows 8:26am.
I know that it stopped 30 minutes ago, so what is the correct time now?
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hint
How many watch minutes pass in a real hour?
Answer
8:10am.
Reasoning
The watch now shows 8:26am, so we know that 8 x 60 + 26 = 506 watch minutes have passed.
Since the watch is gaining 6 minutes every hour, for every real hour that has passed, the watch will show 66 minutes.
So, 506 ÷ 66 ≈ 7.666 real hours have passed.
This equals 460 minutes, which is 7 hours and 40 minutes = 7:40am.
The watch stopped 30 minutes ago, therefore the time must now be 8:10am.
Puzzle 4
The same three-letter word has been removed from all of these words, leaving the letters below (which are still in the correct order).
What was the three-letter word?
loe
ch
she
er
vae
Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone
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Hint
The missing word is in these locations: lo---e, ---ch, s---he, ---er, va---e.
Answer
Cat.
loe = locate
ch = catch
she = scathe
er = cater
vae = vacate