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Random Puzzles 


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Puzzle 1 


Imagine a bottle recycling skip, empty other than one lonely bottle.

Every hour, on the hour, people come and put bottles into the skip.

The first hour, at noon, one person came and put a bottle in.

One hour later, two people each placed a bottle into the skip.

An hour later, four people each placed a bottle into the skip.

This doubling of people continued until 11pm, when the skip was finally full.

When was the skip exactly half full?

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Puzzle 2 


Four friends were discussing the colours of the flowers they had for the local flower show, from this year, and last.

There were four different colours: red, green, blue and yellow.

No-one entered the same colour flower twice.
The entrant who currently has the green flowers, used to have yellow.
Betty, who is not Mrs Long, currently has the blue flowers.
Mrs Kipper, who now has yellow flowers, used to have blue.
Neither Mrs Annie Ford, nor Mrs Jester, have ever owned yellow flowers.
Cybil is not Mrs Kipper.
Diane and Annie have entered four different colours in total.
Can you determine the full names, and colours of the flowers the ladies currently have, and previously had?

Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone

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Puzzle 3 


You have a very large number of generic plastic building blocks, each in the shape of a cube.

Think about how many cubes you would need in order to construct a giant cube with 16 small cubes along each edge.

If you were to then remove the outside layer, how many small cubes would you have removed?

Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone

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Puzzle 4 


What number completes this sequence:

4  15  14  11  5  ?

Puzzle Copyright © Kevin Stone

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