The day before yesterday, Lisa was 13. Next year she will be 16.

How is this possible?

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More Smart-Kit math puzzles

Big Thanks go out to Shawn for submitting this neat challenge. As many of our regulars know, Shawn owns a ridiculous amount of puzzle solving ability, consistently getting not only Smart-Kit’s hardest word puzzles & riddles, but also the math & pictorial challenges too. He’s been visiting since the very early days of the site, and easily recognizable in the comments section by the helpful answers & explanations that beginners (and sometimes experts too!) can rely upon.

My uncle went fishing and had a very good day, catching several fish.  The heaviest three fish together made up 35% of the total weight of the catch, and he quickly sold them.  The three lightest fish together made up 5/13 of the total weight of the remaining fish.  How many fish did my uncle catch?

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

Big Thanks go out to Bilbao for submitting this one!

The seven inner triangles in the picture are isosceles. The outer big triangle is also isosceles.

What is the value of each of the angles in the picture?

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

Earlier puzzles from Bilbao:

The 12 dots

The Unreadable Account

3 Men by the Seaside

In 2001, John and Jane married, and they each already had children from earlier marriages. Ten years later there was a feverish battle engaging the present family of twelve children. Jane ran to John and yelled, “Come at once! Your children and my children are fighting our children!”

As John & Jane now had each nine children of their own, how many were born during the ten years?

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

What number comes next in this series:

1588, 1820, 2148, 2204, 2284, ?

note: only  +, -, x is used

Thanks to Suineg for submitting!

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

Image from artist Luke Chueh

At a school musical practice session, there are 32 tambourinists, 80 triangle beaters, 64 drummers, 112 maracas shakers, and 48 singers. The music teacher assigns the children to equal sized groups. Each group has the same number of singers, and players of each instrument.

What is the largest number of groups possible? (no student is left out)

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A paint store was showcasing it’s new cobalt blue paint. Each paint drum, except one, was numbered as above. A boy passing the formation noticed that each side of the pyramid has numbers that add up to 16. Impressed by the boy’s observational skills, the store owner says he’ll reward the boy with a free paintbrush if he can figure out how to re-arrange the drums so that the three pyramid sides sum to the smallest possible number.

[in other words, all 3 sides have to add up to the same number. What is the smallest such number?]

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

BigThanks go out to Bilbao for submitting this one!

I had the other day in my possession a label bearing the number 3 0 2 5 in large figures.

This got accidentally torn in half, so that 3 0 was on one piece and 2 5 on the other.

On looking at these pieces, I discovered this little peculiarity. If we add the 3 0 and the 2 5 together and square the sum we get as the result the complete original number on the label! Thus, 30 added to 25 is 55, and 55 multiplied by 55 is 3025.

Now, the puzzle is to find another number, composed of four figures, all different, which may be divided in the middle and produce the same result.

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

More Puzzles From Bilbao:

The 12 Dots

Nine Brothers and Sisters

A Cafe owner purchases 2 kinds of Kopi Luwak coffee beans-one at $320 per pound, and the other,  an even better quality, at $400 per pound. He mixes together some of each, and he plans on selling this mix at $430 per pound. In doing so, he plans to make a profit of 25%  on the cost. How many pounds of each kind of coffee must he use to make a mixture of a hundred pounds weight?

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

Much Thanks to Bilbao for submitting this!

Among certain accounts, partially blurred, the following can be read: ‘The amount paid for 72 cows was …670…dollars’. Two figures, the first and the last, are unreadable. It is known that every cow had the same price (no decimal places). How much was paid for each cow and altogether?

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A group of warriors was marching in regular column, with five men more in depth than in front. When the foe came in sight the front was increased by 845 men, and the whole was thus drawn up in five lines.

How many men were there in all?

Want more math puzzles and brain teasers? Check out Smart-Kit’s archive here

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!

In this multiplication problem, the 5 characters shown above represent 5 different numbers. Can you figure out what number corresponds to each character? There is no zero.

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Last weekend we were going through some old items, and came across a pack of number cards. After removing several, and laying them on the floor in a manner you can see above, I then challenged my oldest son to move as few cards as possible so that the left and right columns add up to equal sums. After struggling for about 5 minutes, he said, “Impossible!”

What do you think? Can it be done?

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If 1/5 of a cluster of Panopyras flew to the Viper tree, one-third flew to the Leucomelas tree, three times the difference of these two numbers flew to a Prolemurius tree, and one Panopyra continued to fly about, attracted on each side by the fragrant Teylu and the Dinicthoid, what was the number of Panopyras?

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neat picture courtesy of Brenda Adams

Dylan looked at his loose change and saw four types of coins: pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. After studying the coins, he made the following comment:

Wow; if my pennies were nickels, my nickels were dimes, my dimes were quarters, and my quarters were pennies, I’d still have the same amount of money as I do now.

If the Dylan had 21 coins, how much money was his change worth?

Thanks to Bobo The Bear for submitting this original math puzzle!

Answers to this challenge can be entered into the section below; submissions will automatically be revealed when time is up!