Welcome to Ian’s Friday Puzzle! Dust off those Friday cobwebs with a little manipulation of the old grey matter. Perplexing puzzles, logical, illogical, and sometimes just plain stupid. Be prepared to be bewildered, befuddled and bedazzled!
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A shop keeper sells individual sweets.
These come in packs of 100 sweets.
It takes the shop keeper one second to take out a sweet.
What is the smallest amount of time it will take the shop keeper to count out 80 sweets?
I stand on some scales holding my young son and cat. The scales show 102 kg.
I weigh 60 kg more than the combined weight of my son and cat.
The cat weighs 60% less than my son.
How much does my son weigh?
S Club 7 (all seven of them) are travelling to Rome, and each has seven cars. In each car are seven suitcases, in each suitcase are seven boxes, in each box are seven microphones, and each microphone has seven dust covers. How many items (including S Club 7 members) are there in total?
(Adapted from Fibonacci puzzle in Liber Abaci, 1202 AD)
What number should replace the question mark?
Susie the consumer surveyor looks at the 99 houses in 10ticks Street. The houses are numbered 1- 99.
As only a sample is required, she misses out houses which have a number divisible by 2 or by 3.
How many houses does she survey in this street?
Jimmy the bookkeeper works for a gold merchant every day this week (7 days).
He will be paid one gold bar for his services, but insists he is paid at the end of every day with 1/7 th of the gold bar.
What are the fewest cuts (and where) to the gold bar that will allow the gold merchant to pay Jimmy his 1/7 th of a gold bar each day?
Arrange the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in the grid, so that no two consecutive numbers are in boxes that touch along an edge OR a corner.
Stella is out running. She is now two-fifths of the way through the last third of her run.
What fraction of the whole run has she completed?
Find the values of the whole numbers x and y in these simultaneous equations:
x + y = 8
1/x + 1/y = 2/3
A 3-digit number is made up entirely of odd numbers.
No matter what order the 3 odd numbers are placed in, the 3-digit number is neither prime nor divisible by 3.
Eg 155, which also makes 515 and 551, are all neither prime nor divisible by 3.
There are two other (sets of) numbers like this.
Find one of them.