24: Santa's big sleigh [****]
A parking lot has 16 spaces in a row. Twelve cars arrive, each of which requires one parking space, and their drivers choose their spaces at random fr...
Wes Carroll's Puzzler
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Easy to visualize but challenging to solve: that's the kind of math puzzle you get here, one per episode.(Do you love the Car Talk Puzzler too? Yeah, that's what I'm trying for here, only with even more of a math bent.)
23: Your prime choice [***]
What’s the largest 2-digit prime factor of “200 choose 100”? // Spiciness: *** out of ****
22: Split the check [*]
Last week, two of my friends and I went to a restaurant and had a lovely meal. We decided to evenly split the check, so we asked the waiter to just co...
21: The faulty odometer [***]
A faulty car odometer proceeds from digit 3 to digit 5, always skipping the digit 4, regardless of position. For example, after traveling one mile the...
20: The middle digit [**]
How many three-digit numbers satisfy the property that the middle digit is the average of the first and the last digits? // Spiciness: ** out of ****
19: The token tax [**]
A game is played with tokens according to the following rule. In each round, the player with the most tokens gives one token to each of the other play...
18: The circular track [***]
Brenda and Sally run in opposite directions on a circular track, starting at diametrically opposite points. They first meet after Brenda has run 100 m...
17: The red one [***]
My perpetually tricky friend told me that while she was walking through town she saw four particularly vibrant houses. There was an auburn one, a bric...
16: In 80 days [*]
A friend of mine told me that she can walk a mile south, a mile east, a mile north and end up back home. I first thought she lived at the north pole, ...
15: Coats of paint [***]
Working alone, I put two coats of paint on a wall, one before lunch and one after. Yesterday, I began at the usual time. Two hours before lunch I was ...